Classic Boat March 2013

Classic Boat MARCH 2013

£4.50 US$12.50

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

T H E W O R L D’ S M O S T B E A U T I F U L B O A T S

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

Radical new classic Built to beat the fleet Carlo Riva at 90 Powerboat legend

WHITBREAD ORIGINAL

Yacht that inspired an ocean series

Varnish test All the results CATALAN CLASSICS

Battle in Barcelona

CRUISING ASSOCIATION TODAY

Going online at sea

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CENTRAL LONDON ADDRESS

Living on a barge

9 770950 331134

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CRAFTSMANSHIP

Contents

CRAFTSMANSHIP

COVER STORY

Rum – she’s radical so can she also be classic?

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50 44

COVER STORY

34 . BARCELONA! Enjoy the atmosphere at Catalonia’s classic regatta COVER STORY

44 . CARLO RIVA AT 90 Still at work – the Italian genius of the legendary sportsboats OVER STORY

86 . WHICH VARNISH? Our test’s latest results – and the best of the last decade

COVER STORY

50 . CA GOES ONLINE How the Cruising Association joined the World Wide Web 56 BARGE ON THE RIVER Living aboard near Tower Bridge 42 . A ROOM FOR SAILORS Southwold’s time capsule

HENRI THIBAULT

26 . WHITBREAD’S OWN The boat that was sailed by the sponsor of the global races

GARY BLAKE

26 ABOVE: ONNE VAN DERWAL

COVER STORY

NIGEL PERT

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NICO MARTINEZ

COVER PHOTO: ONNE VAN DER WAAL

MARCH 2013 Nº297

REGULARS 14 . NEWS 18 . OVERSEAS NEWS 20 . LOOKING AHEAD 23 . SALEROOM 25 . OBJECTS OF DESIRE ONBOARD 62 . ACROSS EUROPE Pt 2 68 . ATLANTIC SKETCH 69 . LAZARETTE 71 . CLASSNOTES 73 . GETTING AFLOAT 75 . ADRIAN MORGAN CRAFTSMANSHIP 82 . YARD NEWS 84 . MAINE BOATBUILDERS SHOW 90 . BOATBUILDER’S NOTES 91 . TRADITIONAL TOOL 96 . LETTERS 98 . STERNPOST CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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Yacht Brokerage

SALES, CHARTER & MANAGEMENT

258ft Steam Ship “SS DELPHINE” DELPHINE is an exceptional ship built in 1921 and totally rebuilt between 1997 and 2003, thanks to her passionate owners, into a modern super yacht keeping her unique classic character.

DELPHINE has some incredible history having been placed into US naval service during World War II, then used as a training ship for 18 years until 1997 when she was bought by her current owner who spent nearly six years rebuilding her.

She was re-christened in September of 2003. DELPHINE is now one of the most unique and exceptional private yachts in the Mediterranean fleet and worldwide. In 2004 she received the annual showboats award for best refit.

Although she has kept her 2 incredible steam engines, she is now equipped with all the modern technology equipment and boasts a very luxurious and comfortable interior. She can accommodate up to 26 guests.

102ft “MOONBEAM OF FIFE III”

1903. The story of the Moonbeams began in 1858 with Moonbeam I &II. In 1902 Charles Plumtree Johnson, an eminent London lawyer, decided to go back to William Fife for the creation of his 3rd yacht taking into account his navigation projects as he wanted to race under the new RORC tonnage which included sailing ships with fitted-out interiors. Moonbeam III was launched in 1903, hull n° 491 to leave the Fife yard. The result was a magnificent yacht which has now become one of the most successful classic yachts in the world. Her streamlined shape and large sail surface area both make for an extremely elegant and unique yacht.

Montpellier l La Ciotat l Monaco l Paris Palma, Majorca l Moscow l Hong Kong l Grenada

BERNARD GALLAY Yacht Brokerage

1 rue Barthez - 34000 Montpellier - France Tel. +33 467 66 39 93 - info@bernard-gallay.com www.bernard-gallay.com

C/O SHACkLETON EPIC

Man of parts – Paul larsen, helm of vestas Sailrocket 2, above, is currently crewing a replica of Shackleton’s 1916 James Caird in the South atlantic

FroM daN HouStoN, Editor www.classicboat.co.uk Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London, SW3 3TQ Editorial Editor Dan Houston +44 (0)207 349 3755 cb@classicboat.co.uk Senior art Editor Peter Smith +44 (0)207 349 3756 peter.smith@classicboat.co.uk News/Features Editor Steffan Meyric Hughes +44 (0)207 349 3758 steffan.meyric-hughes@classicboat.co.uk acting Production Editor Peter Willis +44 (0)207 349 3757 peter.willis@classicboat.co.uk Editorial assistant Holly Thacker +44 (0)207 349 3700 holly.thacker@chelseamagazines.com Consultant Editor John Perryman FRINA Publishing Consultant Martin Nott Proofing Vanessa Bird advErtiSiNg advertisement Manager Edward Mannering +44 (0)207 349 3747 edward.mannering@chelseamagazines.com Senior Sales Executive Patricia Hubbard +44 (0)207 349 3748 patricia.hubbard@chelseamagazines.com Client relationship Manager Louisa Skipper +44 (0)207 349 3746 louisa.skipper@chelseamagazines.com advertisement Production Allpointsmedia +44 (0)1202 472781 www.allpointsmedia.co.uk Published Monthly ISSN: 0950 3315 USA US$12.50 Canada C$11.95 Australia A$11.95 Subscribe now: +44 (0)1858 438442 classicboat@subscription.co.uk YACHTS www.subscription.co.uk/classicboat Subscriptions manager William Delmont CHELSEA CHELSEA ARINE ARINE M M +44 (0)207 349 3710 will.delmont@chelseamagazines.com MAGAZINES MAGAZINES YACHTING

Managing director Paul Dobson deputy Managing director Steve Ross Commercial director Vicki Gavin Publisher Simon Temlett digital Manager Oliver Morley-Norris

YACHTS YACHTING CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

Classic Boat, Yachts & Yachting, Sailing today the Chelsea Magazine Company ltd Jubilee House 2 Jubilee Place London SW3 3TQ +44 (0)207 349 3700 www.chelseamagazines.com Copyright The Chelsea Magazine Company 2013 all rights reserved

World record, Brit design The people at the Amateur Yacht Research Society were... well not incensed, but let’s just say exercised. The Vestas Sailrocket 2 – which smashed the sailing speed record on 24 November 2012 with a certified 65.45 knots and a 68.01 knots peak over a 500m course, was designed by Malcolm Barnsley, who is English. Australian helm Paul Larsen was taking all the credit for the Antipodeans and making it look like an Aussie project, they said. Er...

They had come to our stand at the London Boat Show and instead of someone who was interested in speed they found me! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti sailing fast – I just really like being able to make a cup of tea when I’m sailing. And I’d admired the way Sailrocket just blasted the record away, by nearly ten knots, from a kitesurfer who achieved 55.65 knots in October 2010; her 68.01 knots peak equates to 78.26 miles per hour! The record was set at Namibia’s Walvis Bay with wind speeds of around 28 knots.

To be fair the Sailrocket is based on ideas by American designer Bernard Smith who posited the idea for a 40-knot sailboat in 1963. This does not in any way detract from Barnsley’s genius, with more “I like being able than 10 years’ research and trials to make a boat to make a cup of that would overtake most of us on the motorway.

It’s certainly come a long way since the first tea when sailing” speed sailing record was set in 1972 by Brit Tim Colman in his proa design Crossbow, at 26.3 knots. And it’s not just over short distances that these crazy speeds are being achieved; in 2009 Pascal Bidégorry crossed the Atlantic east to west in three days, 15 hours and 25 minutes in Banque Populaire V. On one 24-hour run they did more than 907.9nM. Back in the real world one hopes that some of this technology to harness the wind could soon be used by shipping. I like the idea of sailing fast, but I also like the longer adventure that sailing represents, as I suspect does Paul Larsen, who is in a slow-small-boat adventure as I write – see p15.

Follow the Classic Boat team on Twitter and Facebook CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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The R첫m diaries A radical classic? Ron Valent logs the successes and setbacks of a controversial new design Photos by Nigel Pert

NIGEL PERT

NIGEL PERT

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Above: Fingertip control. Left: Oregon pine for the spars and stainless-steel fittings

t was a magical moment that everyone present will remember for the rest of their lives. During the feeder race from Cannes to Saint-Tropez the mighty J-Class Shamrock V slowly bore down on a cluster of smaller yachts from an earlier start. Just as she was about to overtake them one of the gaff-rigged yachts managed to break free from the the others and, unbelievably, she paced Shamrock – 80ft (24.4m) longer – boat for boat, for several minutes.

Then something even more surprising happened. On Shamrock her 35 crew started trimming to rid her of this tiny challenger. On the small boat her five crew did the same and astonishingly, she pulled away and slowly but very steadily sailed off leaving Shamrock and her amazed crew in her wake. I doubt if they will ever forget the name on her stern: RùM. All the top naval architects of the world are curently competing for the purses of wealthy clients, not in the lucrative mega-yacht market but with expensive daysailers that combine classic looks (but bermudan rig), modern materials and plenty of labour-saving gadgets.

Despite the ‘daysailer’ tag most have some form of accommodation below.

Joining the fray with a striking vessel is a young Dutch designer who approached the concept from a completely different perspective. A high-tech design but with a simple finish, gaff rig, wooden masts, wooden

RùM

“Influences? If any it would be the Godinet Rule from 1892”

NIGEL PERT

blocks, narrow panelled classically cut Dacron sails, manual winches – and no interior. A true daysailer.

Classic Boat took this no-nonsense speedster out for a spin during Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez.

Meet the D&D 43 RùM, a fusion yacht that brings the style of the past and the technology of the present together and does so extremely well. D&D (ignore the ampersand) stands for Danel Design and she is a 43-footer. Oh, and RùM is not the naval alcoholic refreshment but an island on the Scottish West Coast.

This is naval architect Theo Danel’s first launched design and from the start he realised that if you want to cause a ripple in the sleepy classic boat scene you have to come up with something new, exciting but at the same time familiar. The result is RùM, a yacht that looks like a replica of a design from one of the Rater Rules of the late 19th century. An added challenge for Danel was that she should be easy to transport to any place in the world that her owner feels like sailing in.

An 8-Metre on steroids?

Amazingly Danel has succeeded above expectation in all of these aspects of his design brief. She certainly looks like a classic. Many people, and not just dockside punters but experienced yachtsmen as well, have asked if she is a gaff-rigged International 8-Metre, albeit one that received an overdose of steroids at her birth. Lying

NIGEL PERT

alongside the beautiful Bjarne Aas-designed 8-Metre Anne Sophie in Saint-Tropez she looked just that. The transport aspect he solved by keeping her length down to 43ft (13.1m), which fits nicely into a pallet container that can easily be shipped to any location in the world that has a dock, while her gaff rig keeps the spar lengths inside those measurements as well. Her 2.5-ton fin keel is attached by a single bolt and when removed the complete hull becomes an easy-to-handle, lightweight but slightly oversized canoe.

When RùM showed up in France this year for the Régates Royales and Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez the event organisers didn’t really know what to make of the boat or where to put her, so she ended up in the Spirit of Tradition class, racing against Tofinous and Spirit yachts.

The reactions of fellow yachtsmen in the classic fleet though were the best compliments Danel could have hoped for. In Cannes after the racing, experienced professionals off yachts like Elena, Moonbeam IV and Shamrock V, who had seen her out on the water earlier, trotted down the dock in droves to admire her and were unanimous in their judgement: “Out in the bay she looked like an old design; it is only up close that you can see she is new! They should let her race with the classics!”

Asked what his influences were when designing this yacht, Danel said: “If any it would be the Godinet Rule from 1892. Basically it was an ideal formula for

Above: The view of RùM which startled the crew of Shamrock V

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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RùM DEsigNER

Theo Danel BuiLDER

Jachtbouw Vels, Medemblik, Holland LOA

43ft 2in (13.2m) WATERLiNE LENgTh

31ft 3in (9.5m) BEAm

Far left: Designer Theo Danel. Left: RÙM inside her shipping container

7ft 5in (2.3m) DRAughT

8ft 6in (2.6m) sAiL AREA

DispLAcEmENT

9,612 lb (4,360kg) 10

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

RON VALENT

1,302sqft (121m2)

RùM

Above: RúM has no pretensions to be anything other than a fast daysailer Right, clockwise from top left: Theo Danel; first trials on the IJsselmeer; the bow – and the bow-wave

RON VALENt

NIGEL PERt

NIGEL PERt

NIGEL PERt

“Keep it simple and keep it affordable”

designers as you really had total freedom to draw a beautiful yacht as there were few limitations in the hull form.” The Godinet Rule produced a series of extremely fast yachts of which two still exist: the 5-tonner Bona Fide designed by Sibbick and built in Cowes in 1898 and the 3-tonner Phoebus II. Bona Fide won the gold medal in her class at the Paris Olympics in 1900 and since her restoration in 2003 she has cleaned up the prizes in the Med regattas. Danel has typed RùM’s specifications into the Godinet Formula and she actually comes out as a 5-tonner like Bona Fide. That should simplify his participation in the Mediterranean events as a classic boat but up to now hasn’t been appreciated as such.

Danel adds that he was also inspired by the Swedish Skerry cruisers which he always admired for their simplicity and light construction in combination with their pure speed. His years of racing in Metre Class yachts will explain RùM’s narrow beam and slab-sided hull. Lastly he mentions the traditional Dutch racing Lemsteraken – heavy displacement craft but with their flat bottoms and easy lines they are remarkably fast and close-winded. The years he spent as a child leaning over the stern of his father’s Lemsteraak admiring her flat wake must have had their effect on him.

RùM is built in composites with a foam-cored sandwich hull by Jachtbouw Vels in Medemblik on the shores of the IJsselmeer. This makes her light but also incredibly strong. Her spars are not of the expensive and light Sitka spruce but of Oregon pine. All part of Danel’s

“keep it simple and keep it affordable” philosophy that is also apparent in the foam-core, painted deck and stainless-steel deck fittings, and the fact that the whole yacht can be taken apart and made ready for transport in an afternoon’s work. A nice touch is the rudder stock; its angled fitting suggests a keel-hung rudder while in reality of course, it is a balanced spade version. Her teak-look cockpit is actually also a modern material that looks and feels like teak but to all intents is plastic.

RùM hasn’t the slightest pretensions of offering even the most basic accommodation – owners are assumed to prefer sleeping ashore. Or on the sailbags that fill her forepeak. But she does have massive storage in her deep cockpit lockers, including a 100-litre coolbox for refreshments that ensures sailing in style and comfort.

MoMents of blistering speed Sailing in Cannes was a steep learning curve for Danel and his crew. Designed specifically for relatively light weather Mediterranean sailing, and having only had three days of sailing on the IJsselmeer in 5-knot breezes before she was shipped there, the week of the Régates Royales was a major challenge. Not only were Theo Danel and myself the only crew who had been on board before, the winds averaged 15 knots with gusts of over 30 knots and heavy showers on two of the days, with all racing cancelled on the last day. After five days we concluded that the biggest reef was too small and the smallest jib too big. A problem that is easily fixed. But CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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RON VALENT

RON VALENT

NigEL pERT

RON VALENT

RùM

Anticlockwise from top left: Three stages of the build process, using foam-core sandwich; the business end of the bowsprit

we had also experienced moments of blistering speed when we flew downwind at 13 knots and surfed like a planing dinghy. Whenever the wind dropped to more acceptable levels she took off and showed her true potential.

One of the crew was Michiel Insinger. “I hadn’t seen her before but when I walked down the dock in Cannes my first thoughts were: ‘Wow, I really, really must sail on that boat!’ I spend most of my time racing on Dragons and 8-Metres, in my eyes two of the most beautiful designs ever, but when I saw her I felt she was a perfect blend of function and classic beauty! Out on the water she fulfilled my every expectation. She is really sensitive to the trim of both sails and where the crew sit but she picks up speed like a dinghy and then holds on to it.”

No class to race iN Saint-Tropez offered RùM the conditions she was designed for but there was no class for her to race in.

Danel and his stylishly attired crew followed the classics around the Bay of Saint-Tropez, pacing them wherever possible without interfering with their racing. At the end of the week he had proved his point. RùM is beautiful, blisteringly fast, fun and easy to sail and above all a yacht that blends in with the classics and somehow should find a place there.

Unluckily RùM is probably never going to race in Saint-Tropez as the organisers have dropped the Spirit of Tradition class. Danel asked to participate with the classics with a highly penalised CIM rating. This had the blessing of a large number of owners and skippers in the classic class but the race committee were unwilling to allow it. When Theo Danel heard that the Fife cutter Iona on which he had been skipper for 13 years wasn’t 12

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

going to be present in Saint-Tropez, he boldly parked RùM in her reserved spot in front of the Capitainerie and so managed to slip into the event after all. A fact the organisers only caught on to after the regatta was over and were extremely displeased about. French sense of humour obviously can’t handle Dutch cheekiness.

But is she a true classic? Naval architect Jack Ross Gifford, owner of a centenarian Rater design, crewed on RùM in Cannes for the Feeder Race to Saint-Tropez.

“She is very unique, very original, very individual. She really fitted in with the regatta quite nicely but at the same time wasn’t like any of the other boats that were there. The rig is key to that effect. It really feels as if you are sailing on a classic boat. In that respect the concept is a success. Her hull shape actually isn’t that unusual. Fin and bulb raters have been around for a long time and RùM is simply a modern interpretation of the type. She really feels like a classic.”

Surprisingly, a lot of people at the regattas felt that if RùM had been built in wood, strip planked in Sitka, for instance, and coated in epoxy for ease of maintenance, she would and should have been seen as a classic. But as Danel chose cost-efficient foam-core for her construction she was seen as a Spirit of Tradition or even a purely modern yacht. So ironically it is not the design that has made her controversial but her foam-cored hull!

Perhaps it is time to rethink the CIM measurement system. The classic scene is best served with growth and new exciting boats to stir the imagination of press and public and whether the design is 100 years old or brand new is possibly irrelevant. www.daneldesign.com

News

Classic boat’s address: Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place sW3 3TQ For phone numbers, please see page 5

Dimbleby: an old gaffer

The Question Time host and his boat, soon to be featured on TV

C/o oGA

“Not all old gaffers are hairy monsters with pipes and pints, muttering in corners,” joked David Dimbleby, dapper as ever, for his appearance on the Old Gaffer’s Association stand at the London Boat Show on 14 January.

His talk was to publicise the OGA’s big year this year. If you have not already heard – they’re 50! And they are celebrating with a mass sail around Britain (anti-clockwise from Maldon, Essex, the OGA’s birthplace) to Cowes, where they will hold Britain’s biggest regatta this year from 15-18 August. With nearly 200 yachts expected, it’s going to be the party of the year.

David spoke about his own membership of the OGA (since 1980) and of his boat Rocket, a customised Gaffers and Luggers Heard 28 workboat-derived yacht that he had built, also in 1980. Her cabin is shortened for greater cockpit space and he sails her out of Dartmouth , Devon, with his family.

Rocket will be featureed on BBC One this year in a new two-part series in which Dimbleby will explore the English Channel in her and talk about the history of this natural frontier to Britain.

Irmelin 1913

C/o bobby Cyrus

95SqM yacht in Sweden

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

boatbuilder bobby Cyrus, who works at stockholm’s båtsnickeri yard, sent us this photo of his own yacht, the 95sqM Irmelin. she was built in 1913 at the famous Ngelinge boatyard by August Plym to a design by Albert Anderson for Mr Ps Graham of stockholm. she’s 48ft (14.6m) long, of Honduras mahogany on steambent oak frames with every third frame in steel. she carries a gaff rig. More from the båtsnickeri yard in yard News, p82.

NEW PRODUCT

Holy Grail of antifouls?

Hempel’s new silicone antifoul makes some extraordinary promises to boat owners, which, if it works, will revolutionise the way we keep our hulls clean. The copper- and biocide-free silicone coating uses something called hydrogel technology to achieve a non-stick finish. At the London boat show Hempel’s Darren Gittens demonstrated the effect by effortlessly blowing sticky tape off the paint. The same tape then stuck fast to conventional antifoul. Tests promise longevity but as yet it is untested on carvel hull boats.

C/o shACkleTon ePiC

SHACKLETON vOyAgE

Shackleton boat in 50-knot storm The new boat, a faithful replica of the original James Caird and named Alexandra Shackleton after Sir Ernest’s granddaughter, has been battling through 50-knot winds and swells of 23ft (7m), at times surfing down wave faces at seven knots.

Six men, a 22ft dinghy, 16 days and the Southern Ocean

Close encounter with a whale In the first five days of the voyage, the crew have had a close encounter with a whale, and experienced serious water ingress that required all hands to the pumps and buckets.

Expedition leader Tim Jarvis told CB that even early trials aboard the boat around the Isle of Wight were tough. The boat’s size means that four must be below at all times, in

“All hands to the pumps and buckets”

conditions so cramped that even lying down must be choreographed.

It is a change of scene for navigator Paul Larsen, who recently helmed Vestas Sailrocket II to a record 68 knots. He told CB that sailing the four-knot Shackleton boat through the Southern Ocean would be “just as challenging”.

Like Shackleton’s, this voyage is characterised by sodden clothes, freezing cold, seasickness and hunger due to the impracticality of cooking.

All gear and food is as original, apart from a VHF, an EPIRB and a support ship 20 miles away. When we went to press, the boat was on target to equal Shackleton’s time of 14 days.

See updates at www.classicboat.co.uk

C/o heriTAge loTTery

A decked whaler just 22ft 6in (6.9m) long left Elephant Island at 1900 on 23 January, slowly making her way out into the Southern Ocean, away from the looming ice pack to the east.

She aims to reach South Georgia, 800 miles away, by about 8 February, when her six-strong Anglo-Australian crew will trek across the mountainous interior to reach the old whaling station in Stromness.

The voyage recreates the journey carried out by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men in 1916 in a desperate bid to get help for the crew of the Endurance stranded on Elephant Island. Shackleton’s trip was named

by Everest’s Edmund Hilary as “the greatest survival journey of all time”.

£790,500 of lottery funding for two important East Coast boats A heritage lottery Fund grant of £790,500 will ensure the restoration and futures of two important east Coast Boats: the 43ft (13.1m) smack Priscilla (1893) and a 27ft (8.2m) Trinity house launch, number 393, built in the 1950s.

The project – called “land and sea – the craft of building and using traditional boats” – will, over three years, see 15 apprentices working towards qualifications in marine engineering while they restore the ships back to seaworthiness. Boatbuilder Brian kennell of the Pioneer sailing Trust, charged with the restorations, told CB that the Trinity house boat, a tough clinker-built

inboard diesel launch used to ferry supplies between lighthouses and lightships, will retain about half of her original fabric – including the original four-cylinder Petter diesel. she was built by lambie ltd of north shields, north Tyneside.

Priscilla, the oyster-dredging smack built in Brightlingsea and the oldest stone Brothers shipyard vessel in existence today, was found and recovered in Bristol 10 years ago in very poor condition. her restoration will take the form of a complete rebuild, back to her original length – shorter by about 6ft (1.8m).

Last chance to vote!

More than 3,100 voters have already visited our website to vote in the first CB Awards, in association with Teamac. There are 11 categories and so far, nearly 10,000 votes have been cast. Competition in each category is very tight – so every vote really does count.

Please take a moment to visit www.classicboat. co.uk/awards2013, and vote for your favourite boats, yards and people.

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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A stylish performance cruiser

This gentleman’s day sailer cruises in style. However, looks can be deceiving.

During every stage of design and production the focus has been to create a yacht that is not only good looking, but also extremeley fast and easy to sail single handed. The Essence 33 embodies performance, elegance and style For more details visit our web site or call.

Hondsdijk 5

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2396 HG

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Koudekerk aan den Rijn

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+31 71 342 10 10

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www.essenceyachts.com

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info@yagt.nl

NEWS Left and below: Hacker-Craft Sportabout 26 and its split cockpit – all in mahogany

LONDON BOAT SHOW 2013

GAFFERS PLAY HOST

PETER WILLIS

With no big CB feature, the Old Gaffers Association stand took over as a mecca for traditionalists, hosting Question Time’s David Dimbleby for a short talk about his involvement with the OGA (see p14). He has been a CB subscriber since the start.

The Knowledge Box hosted author and CB contributor Sam Llewellyn, marine artist Claudia

Myatt, Beverley Daley-Yates of the OGA on the round-Britain cruise, yachting cartoonist Mike Peyton with his biographer Dick Durham and Professor Mark Horton from BBC’s Coast series, whose talk was titled “Why bother to restore an old gaffer?” He should know, after restoring his Maurice Griffiths yacht.

MAHOGANY MOTORBOAT As for classic boats, there was, as always, a distinct paucity. However, one of the few wooden boats that did make it to London was so startling, it made it worth the visit.

Hacker-Craft, keen to establish a greater presence in Britain (and no doubt bolstered by the ever-increasing value of vintage Riva boats) brought along one of their own. Unlike Riva and Chris-Craft, Hacker has never stopped building its boats in mahogany and its single V8-powered 26ft (7.9m) ‘sportabout’ drew gasps of admiration as it sat bouncing the

South Hall’s lights off its mahogany and chrome. A few visitors remarked “It looks like a Riva” to Graham from British dealer Gibbs Boat Sales, to which he stoutly replied “No, Rivas look like this”. A rorty American original is back in the limelight – and at just £179,950 inc VAT, it’s a, er, comparative bargain.

Above, left to right: On the OGA stand: Sue Farrer (OGA); Mike Peyton, 93, longest-standing OGA member; David Dimbleby; Sue Lewis (OGA); Sam Llewellyn, author Below left: Mingming Below right: Swallow Boats’ new BayRaider Expedition attracted attention

INTERNATIONAL 12-FOOT Other classic exhibitors included Anglia Brokerage with a new traditionally-built International 12-Foot (see Getting Afloat, p73, for more details) ; Swallow Boats with their 20ft (6.1m) BayRaider Expedition; a lone Drascombe among the powerboats, and Cornish Crabbers, with the biggest surprise of all – a new range in bermudan rig (also in Getting Afloat).

In the World Cruising corner, we found Mingming, the globe-trotting junk-rigged Corribee with her skipper, writer Roger Taylor.

CB’s more modest stand reported a brisk trade in subscription sales.

PETER WILLIS

After years of falling attendance and empty floor space, this year’s London Boat Show from 12-20 January was not only a day shorter, but squeezed into half the space at its home in East London’s docklands, the giant ExCeL Centre. Surprisingly, the organisers were reporting a rise in attendance (albeit of just one per cent) – outside, there were queues to enter and even ticket touts. Certainly, it felt a little livelier in its compacted guise, even without our feature stand, once the most popular there (after the bar!).

GRAEME SWEENEY

Compact Boat Show pulls in crowds

The London Boat Show will be back in 2014, 11-19 January www.londonboatshow.com CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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neWS

oBItUarY

Henri-Lloyd’s Henry Strzelecki MBE Henry (Henryk) Strzelecki of Henri-Lloyd died on 26 December 2012 at the age of 87. Born in Brodnica, Poland, he fled occupied Poland in the war and fought with the British Army. With Poland in the grip of communism after the war, ‘Mr Henri’, as everyone knew him, stayed in Britain and studied textiles in Manchester, marrying Sheila, a Yorkshire woman, in 1952.

It was Henri’s love of sailing that led him to the new man-made fibres of the day, among them Bri-Nylon, to make sailing gear.

He entered into partnership with Angus Lloyd in 1963 to form Henri-Lloyd. Their innovations included hand-taped seams, non-corrosive nylon zips and integrated safety harnesses. In 1993, the company opened a factory in Brodnica, Henri’s home town.

He has tested his gear on those who’ve taken it to extremes, Sir Francis Chichester and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston among them. He once invited visitors to the

Henri-Lloyd stand at the boat show to karate chop his taped seams to see their strength.

achievement awards Henri was awarded the MBE in 1985 for services to the clothing industry, then the Gold Cross of Merit in 1990 from the President of Poland and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the RYA. After his retirement in 1996, he was awarded an honorary MA from the University of Salford, then, in 2009, an honorary doctorate of technology from the Manchester Metropolitan University. Henri was due to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Yachting Journalists’ Association in January; it was awarded posthumously.

Henri was predeceased by his wife but survived by two sons, Paul and Martin, a daughter Diane, eight grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. Those who knew him remember a selfless man who lived his life for others.

oCean CrUISInG CLUB

James Wharram wins OCC award rnLI

Call-outs down

RNLI launches in 2012, the second wettest year on record, were down by seven per cent on 2011. The RNLI launched 8,321 times in Britain and Ireland, half of them to leisure boaters. Of these, 1,711 were to powered craft, 1,651 to sailing craft and 711 to manual craft.

The RNLI Flood Rescue Team was also in action 11 times.

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Multihull pioneer James Wharram has won the prestigious Award of Merit from the Ocean Cruising Club, it was announced in January.

Two co-winners were Tim Severin (historical re-enactment voyages) and Dick Giddings (‘patron saint’ of Caribbean yacht cruises).

James Wharram has already won our Design Competition for his 27ft (8.2m) eco-fishing catamaran Amatasi. He designed his first offshore cruising catamaran, the 23ft 6in (7.2m) Tangaroa, in 1953 and sailed it across the Atlantic to prove its seaworthiness.

He has continued to design and build catamarans ever since, making him, today, the world’s longest-serving and most prolific multihull designer, with more than 10,000 sets of plans sold.

Word of the month

Bermudan (rig)

Val Howells won the OCC’s Geoff Pack Memorial Award for the revised edition of his 1966 book Sailing into Solitude (CB287). Awards chairman Peter Whatley told CB that the awards “tend to go to people who aren’t in the public eye”. The OCC was founded in 1954 by Humphrey Barton. Past winners have included Robin KnoxJohnston and Ellen MacArthur.

“the name is now generally accepted, but it seems as farfetched as that of the great double continent which is named after a man who never saw more of it than a small part of a previously discovered coast.” Claud Worth, Yacht Cruising, 1934

CRAFTSMANSHIP

Overseas news NETHERLANDS TO LONDON

Reputation of Dutch designs to be tested The Warber: can she confound the reputation of the Dutch sailing type?

COURTESY ZEILEN

A Dutch yachting journalist was poised ready to prove the speed and seaworthiness of his native flat-bottomed Dutch barges as we went to press.

Willem Plet, editor of Holland’s biggest sailing magazine, Zeilen, was planning a voyage, to take place at the end of January, from the north of Holland to London’s Tower Bridge and back in a lemsteraak, a traditional flat-bottomed Dutch sailing barge.

“Originally these designs were neither seaworthy nor considered very fast. However, this boat, The Warber, has been newly built with a traditional look to defy these prejudices,” says Willem.

The designer claims it is faster than most modern yachts of its length and that it can theoretically cross the North Sea safely. It is Willem’s plan to test these claims for Zeilen.

FRANCE

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CLASSIC BLUE-WATER CRUISER FOR COUPLES

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BUYERS’ GUIDE: HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST NEW SAILS FOR YOUR BOAT

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March 2013 Vendee drama | Match racing guru| Flying Moths | Test: Elan 210 | Warm kit www.yachtsandyachting.co.uk | Issue #1659

A voyage from Essex to the Arctic this summer will raise money for cancer charity Macmillan. The boat, Iceni, was built of steel by Thames barge builder and restorer Owen Emerson in 1998 and is inspired by Thames barges, but with a long keel and 6ft (1.8m) draught. Her rig is gaff main with a loose-footed bermudan mizzen sail. She is 50ft (15.2m) long with a 14ft (4.3m) beam; a two-year refit is due to complete by the end of March. Her departure date has already been set – 1 July, and there are still two crew positions open to join the existing complement of able-bodied and disabled members. To learn more or donate, please visit www.arctic2013.co.uk.

GROUP TEST: 13 LED TORCHES MY MARINA: WELLS-NEXT-THE-SEA

CRUISING: SPANISH RIAS

Svalbard for cancer charity

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

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MARCH 2013

ARCTIC CIRCLE

The first international meeting of ‘extraordinary boats’ will take place in Deauville, Normandy, 13-15 July.

More than 30 ‘vessels of the future’ have so far signed up to this mixedpropulsion gathering, including solarpowered boats, kite-boats and hydrogen-powered boats. The organisers, at les.bateaux. extraordinaires@gmail. com, are appealing for British boats to come forward.

YACHTS YACHTING

IN THE LATEST ISSUE

SAILING TODAY

World’s weirdest boats

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

YACHTS YACHTING

£4.30 ISSUE N°1659 MARCH 2013

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

HOW TO SUCCEED IN 2013

Sail like a

WINNER Moth world champion shares his secrets

CHELSEA ARINE M MAGAZINES

IN THE LATEST ISSUE  Sir Ben Ainslie - 8 things

you should know

Make this your best year yet

8

 Moth champ’s winning secrets THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SIR BEN AINSLIE

'Mr Henri' Lloyd

 Vendee Globe – inside stories

Tribute to a legend

Ocean trials

The really wild side of the Vendee Globe

1659 Cover (1)_CG.indd 1

03

 RYA Dinghy Show - free guide

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22/01/2013 11:07

Available at all good newsagents or order now post-free from www.chelseamagazines.com/shop CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

19

Looking ahead Things to do in the next few weeks tALK The Story of Navigation 26 February Four millennia of navigation with a yacht club talks master Jeremy Batch 1930-2100hrs Parkstone Yacht Club, Poole Tel: (0)1929 481121 or +44 (0)1202 706280 www.cruising.org.uk

50th anniversary of Mirror class at the RYA Dinghy show

6 March, 7pm In the wake of Jason, almost!

Cruising Association, London Tel: +44 (0)207 537 2828, www.cruising.org.uk 11 March, 8pm Cruising in exotic climes

EXhibitiOn James Dodds 27 February – 16 March (then as part of East Coast Influences until 6 April) Messum’s, London www.messum.com Tel: +44 (0)20 7437 5545. It is instantly apparent that James Dodds was once a shipwright but it’s the floating dreamlike aspects of his subjects that elevates his work to a greater audience.

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

thE RESULtS and the winners are......

MARthA and BB Crowninshield

2-3 March Alexandra Palace, London Tel: +44 (0)844 858 9069, rya.org.uk The RYA Dinghy Show (which everyone calls the ‘Ally Pally Dinghy Show) is one of the lesser known joys in the sailing calendar. It is, according to the RYA, the only show in the world dedicated to dinghies, and certainly there’s enough there to warrant at least half a day spent wandering the isles. The charm of the show is the splendour of the venue and the fact that there is always quite a lot of classic interest. This year, one of the highlights will be a 50th anniversary display and talks for the ubiquitous Mirror Class.

tALKS

Next month in Classic Boat

A dreamaway restoration of this 1907 San Franciscan schooner once owned by actor James Cagney

MALLARD Henley Golf Club, Berkshire Tel: +44 (0)7841 039946, www.henleyoffshore.org

The Peter Duck class was based on Arthur Ransome’s famous “floating bath chair” and is a lot of boat in 28ft

13 March, 7pm Cooking Across the Atlantic Cruising Association, London Tel: +44 (0)207 537 2828, www.cruising.org.uk

EvEntS SpEciAL

SAiLinG nEW ZEALAnD

cARibbEAn

2 March RNZYS Commodore’s Cup Te Kouma race to Man O’ War Bay, New Zealand Tel: +64 9446 6081, www.classicyacht.org.nz

29-31 March St Maarten-St Martin Classic Yacht Regatta, St Martin, Caribbean Tel: +1 721 523 7671, www.classicregatta.com

and 20 years of Brest April is our Global Events issue with typically some 400 listed. And a look back at 20 years of the Brest fest

pLUS pLUS Building a Shannon One Design; Antigua’s Woodstock builders and more

KEEP SAILING WITH HEMPEL

CRUISING PERFORMER

www.hempel.co.uk

TIGER XTRA

OCEAN PERFORMER Use antifouling products safely.

Always read the label and product information before use.

Partridge, Marseille 2012

Since 1790

42 Medina Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight PO31 7BY T. (01983) 294051 E. ratseysails@ratsey.com

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Photo © Piérick Jeannoutot

Proud to support

Saleroom SOTHEBY’S LONDON

Left: Daniels’ only two-day marine chronometer Below left: The 1796 Mudge chronometer

Time is money

BY DAVE SELBY The personal collection of Britain’s most eminent modern-day horologist, which came under the hammer at Sotheby’s recently, included an early marine chronometer designed by the man who came second in the quest to produce a timepiece accurate enough to determine longitude at sea.

This rare and important 1796 one-day marine chronometer, which sold for £301,250, bears the eccentric maker’s inscription “Pennington, Pendleton & others…” and was manufactured to the design of Thomas Mudge (1715-94), the celebrated watchmaker who followed in the footsteps of “longitude hero” John Harrison.

Indeed, Mudge’s shabby treatment by the Board of Longitude echoed the experience of Harrison himself, and it was only after forceful lobbying in parliament by his son that Thomas Mudge was eventually awarded £2,500 for his original marine chronometer in 1792.

The 1796 Mudge chronometer was the most important among a number of marine timepieces offered by Sotheby’s in London in the spectacular auction of the personal collection of the late George Daniels, who was quite simply the most important horologist of the 20th century.

Daniels, who died in 2011 at the age of 83, was the only watchmaker ever to be awarded both a CBE and an MBE for services to horology. He was one of the very few people able to handcraft an entire watch and made just 27 of them over a 40-years period.

The top price paid in the auction was £1,329,250 for Daniels’ own astoundingly intricate 1982 “Space Traveller” pocket watch. Rather more affordable was his first and only marine

chronometer, made in 1952, which fetched £25,000, 10 times its pre-sale estimate. The entire £8.3-million proceeds from the 137-lot auction are going towards The George Daniels Educational Trust, which helps fund students in higher education.

See more Daniels marine chronometers online at See www.classicboat.co.uk in our new Sale Room Gallery.

Salermooorme onl www.class ine ic

BONHAMS

boat.co.u k/ saleroom for more stories

Nelson’s letter to Lady Hamilton

OSENAT CLASSIC CAR AUCTION

Swiss speedboat This stylish GRP-hulled speedboat, built in 1966 by Swiss yard Tuescher was one of seven classic boats offered at French company Osenat’s latest classic car auction in Fontainebleau.

Powered by a 6-litre Chrysler V8 and reported to be in exceptional condition, the one-owner Tuescher, with gleaming deck in varnished wood, made €25,520 (approx £21,500), a considerable amount of elegance for the money.

After his 1798 victory in the Battle of the Nile Nelson was riding high in public esteem while his private life was in turmoil, as revealed in a hastily scrawled note to Emma Hamilton.

At the same time as he was being hailed as a national hero Nelson endured ridicule as the infatuated dupe of his mistress Emma as his marriage foundered.

In the note, written following a row with Emma, probably in 1801, an emotional Nelson scribbles: “Never will I sit tamely and see You My Dear friend neglected or insulted.”

This revealing glimpse of Nelson’s love life sold for £20,000 at a Bonhams auction of autographs.

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

23

Objects of desire Bellerby globe Handmade and hand-painted by the team of craftsmen in their London studios, these limited edition globes really give an unique glimpse of what our planet looks like from all angles. They are set on an American walnut bearing base that allows smooth and quiet free spinning, in any direction by hand, to study the beautifully detailed surface. Bellerby makes a huge Curve globe at £14,000 but for thinner wallets the firm also makes this 9in (229mm) equally fascinating free spinning desk globe from £598.

Larger 50in (1270mm) versions of these globes were made for Churchill and Roosevelt in WWII. Spin and dream. www.bellerbyandco.com Tel: +44 (0)208 800 7235

Innovacelli barometer This striking Innovacelli barometer is made from hand-blown glass and chrome parts using an innovative new system that doesn’t contain harmful mercury but facilitates vacuum metal containers and liquid in a capillary tube, guaranteeing that the pressure is conveyed without any friction occurring and making it exceedingly accurate. The base is weighted and secure and although very modern in function, the design and style harks back to an almost Victorian past. £688 www.boatique.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1491 410840

Bronze cowl There’s not much that complements a teak deck more than well shined heavy cast bronze, sparkling like the sun off the sea below it. Davey and Co offers this bronze cowl with a flush deck plate allowing it to be turned and locked in any direction. A blanking cap is supplied for when the cowl is removed. £309.63 bronze, £354.24 chrome (ex-VAT) www.davey.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1206 500945

Nautical fashion Sailormade fashion accessories like this bracelet are inspired by vintage yachting hardware such as this inglefield hook (or brummel clip) style of clasp. This Camden Navy wrap is in three-strand polyester with rhodium-plated brass clasps.

It’s £66 ($105) and available in various colours. A polished brass version, Endeavour, is also available as are leather, or braided options and some neat drum-winch-style clasps, and necklaces. Very aprés spray, as they might say... www.sailormadeusa.com Tel: +1 646 580.5120

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Gaastra Flagship Store Newport, Rhode Island, USA 16 Bannister’s Wharf, Newport, RI 02840 Tel: 401-846-8700 Email: newportgaastra@verizon.net

www.gaastra.eu

FOX ON THE RUN

Built for Colonel Whitbread, the legendary Lone Fox is now winning prizes in Antigua, reports David Hutchison

28

c/O Sarah Fremantle

PrevIOUS PaGeS: Onne van der Wal

M

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Previous spread and above right: Lone Fox at the 2010 Antigua Panerai Classic Yacht Regatta Left: Colonel Whitbread at the helm in the Minch, c1970

y fascination with Lone Fox began when, as a boy, I watched her launch ceremony at my greatgrandfather’s boatyard, Alexander Robertson, on the Clyde. Many years later, while researching the history of yachts built at the yard, I discovered that she was still sailing in the Caribbean.

The majestic 64ft (19.5m) racing/cruising ketch Lone Fox was built in 1957 for brewery chief Colonel W H Whitbread. She was his private yacht for 24 years, most of which were spent at Badachro, near his secluded Letterewe estate on the rugged west coast of Scotland.

The great-great-great-grandson of Samuel Whitbread who founded the famous brewing company in 1742, Bill, as he was known to many, became chairman of the family company at the age of 44 in 1944.

He was a passionate amateur jockey, having twice ridden in the Grand National, and under his leadership Whitbread became the first company to sponsor a major sporting event in Britain with the 1957 Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown Park. With the Badminton Horse Trials in 1961 these ventures were a great commercial success for the company, while allowing the Colonel to promote one of his favourite sports. However, he was soon to develop this sponsorship concept further to include another great love of his life, sailing.

LONE FOX

OWNER, IRA EPSTEIN

ONNE vAN dER WAl

Whitbread’s close friendship with the legendary Sir Francis Chichester had a fundamental influence on the funding and creation of the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. Their friendship had begun in the 1930s, based initially on a common love of flying. The Colonel’s daughter Sarah remembers the close bond with the famous yachtsman. “His mooring [on the Beaulieu River] was two further upriver from us. While he was building Gipsy Moth IV, which he sailed round the world, my father lent him his other yacht Greylag II.” Whitbread’s patronage of Chichester began in 1962 when he sponsored his record-breaking single-handed transatlantic passage in Gipsy Moth III. For Chichester’s 1966 attempt to be the first to sail single-handed round the world against the clock, Whitbread made a very generous no-strings contribution towards the cost of his custom-built Gipsy Moth IV, and also supplied him with Whitbread Tankard beer for the long voyage.

Colonel Whitbread was inspired by his old friend’s epic voyages. When the Whitbread company was approached to sponsor the first crewed race round the world in 1971 he was very easily convinced. Whitbread patronage of this popular sailing event lasted until 2000.

The Colonel had also established a close friendship with David Boyd, Alexander Robertson’s distinguished naval architect, based on their shared interest in wildfowling, deer-stalking and sailing in Scotland, but

when he decided to build Lone Fox it was to another designer, Robert Clark, that he turned. In 1952 Whitbread had bought the Clark-designed Benbow, a fast 71ft (21.6m) bermudan cutter built at Camper & Nicholson in 1939. For a few years he raced her on the South Coast under RORC rules with a family crew and some professional help. However, he soon realised that a well-appointed fast cruiser was now more appropriate than a racing yacht which required an experienced crew.

Discussions with Robert Clark Ltd were initiated in the early part of 1955 and by September of that year design work was well under way. A full set of plans for a 42-ton TM auxiliary ketch (Design No 160) had been completed by January 1956. Sometime during the early part of 1956 the detailed specifications and plans were sent out to a number of yacht building companies, with Alexander Robertson’s yard receiving copy number 3.

Above: Lone Fox’s deck and cockpit – the winch-top seats provide a sense of scale

‘first class in all respects’ It is clear from the designer’s comprehensive specifications that the new yacht was going to be something rather special. “The vessel is to be built to a high class... to produce an efficient and seamanlike ocean-going yacht. The workmanship and materials throughout are to be of the best description and quality... and built under Lloyd’s Special Survey, with a view to classification. Teak where specified is to be CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

29

LONE FOX Length OverALL

64ft 2in (19.6m) Length On WAterLine

44ft 7in (13.6m) beAm

13ft (4m) 7ft 9in (2.4m) DispLAcement

42 tons

beKen OF cOWes

DrAught

sAiL AreA

sAnDbAnK LibrAry

1,635sqft (152m2)

30

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Burma teak... and all spars are to be built of hollow Sitka spruce. The workmanship of the accommodation is to be first class in all respects.”

Alexander Robertson’s yard at Sandbank had a long reputation for the quality of its workmanship and was well positioned to service the new yacht on the west coast of Scotland. Some discussions must have taken place with David Boyd (who shot a magnificent stag during a trip to the Colonel’s Letterewe Estate in October 1956) as all the detailed design work of the luxurious interior was carried out by Boyd, in very close consultation with the owner.

Whitbread green The hull of Lone Fox was a very distinctive dark green, a long-established Whitbread family colour. The Colonel sent up four cans of blue and four cans of green International paint to be blended by the foreman painter to get the perfect match. This paint was forever referred to as “The Whitbread Green” by workers at the yard.

On 10 July 1957 Mrs Betty Whitbread, wife of the owner, christened the new yacht Lone Fox, no doubt reflecting the Colonel’s interest in fox-hunting and perhaps the private nature of the man himself. The launch ceremony was attended by members of the Whitbread family, directors and employees of the yard;, designer Robert Clark, the Lloyd’s surveyor, a large

LONE FOX

OWNER, IRA EPSTEIN

OWNER, IRA EPSTEIN

OWNER, IRA EPSTEIN

“The launch-carriage broke free. Lone Fox gathered speed and began to hurtle down the slipway...”

Above: The main saloon. Above right: Navigation station and master cabin.

Opposite, top: At Cowes, c1959; below: Launch day at Robertson’s

gathering of Sandbank residents, many excited children from the local school, and of course myself.

After her launch all the craftsmen were reassigned to work on David Boyd’s America’s Cup yacht Sceptre. Both yachts were of similar size and built in the same shed, which had the ‘big lead smelter’ to cast their heavy keels.

The Colonel was always very friendly and relaxed when he visited the yard and clearly enjoyed being around all the craftsmen. This precious time with his yacht must have been the perfect antidote to the exceptionally hectic business life he had while consolidating all the small breweries and building the big new one at Luton. He would often bring a haunch of venison from his estate for the extremely grateful members of the office staff. Several of the yard employees were even given special leave to crew on Lone Fox for extended periods during the summer.

Colonel Whitbread sailed and occasionally raced his new yacht on the South Coast for a few years, but with more exciting cruising available on the beautiful west coast of Scotland, near his estate, he moved Lone Fox up to Badachro in the early 1960s. There were many enjoyable sailing excursions with the family, but the cautious Colonel always had his ‘hand on the tiller’.

They would frequently go exploring the West Coast and Hebrides for up to two weeks at a time. Contact with the brewery was maintained using the old red

telephone boxes located at key anchorages. Occasionally, in some more remote locations, essential business discussions had to take place via Oban Radio on open channels. The Colonel devised a series of special code words so that important business communication would not be recognised on the airwaves.

DISMASTED IN THE YARD Lone Fox was wintered each year at Robertson’s where maintenance and repairs were carried out to keep her in picture-perfect condition. It was during one such visit in 1977 that the now infamous dismasting incident took place. Lone Fox was ready for launch with her wooden masts already fitted, but the three heavy wire stabilising stays on the derrick crane were still in place, including the one across the slipway. The launch-carriage broke free, Lone Fox gathered speed and began to hurtle down the slipway. The stabilising stay across the slipway passed over the mizzen, but caught the mainmast and snapped it. Lone Fox was almost pulled off the launchcarriage, but mercifully she quickly came to a halt due to the exceptionally high launch tide. Lone Fox is remembered very affectionately at Sandbank so I’m extremely grateful that my family did not contribute to this fiasco, as they had sold the yard in 1965.

Colonel Whitbread skippered Lone Fox himself and sailed her regularly until he was 81 when he very CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

31

LONE FOX

ALL PICTURES BY OWNER, IRA EPSTEIN

“By the end of the project she had been completely restored back to her original Lloyd’s +100A1 rating”

Above: Restoration, clockwise from top left: Forward cabin; new decklights; refastening her bottom; routing seams for splines

reluctantly had to sell her. To mark the event he had special Lone Fox clocks commissioned to present to all his old sailing crew. After Talbot Smith purchased her in 1981 she was based in North Wales and raced regularly in the Irish Sea. She also took part in a Tall Ships Race from Denmark round Scotland to Greenock. In 1985 she again returned to her home waters and took part in the West Highland Yachting Week regatta.

stolen and reflagged In 1986 Keith Ehlert from California bought Lone Fox and sailed her to Antigua with a view to operating her as a charter yacht. Keith took on a Swedish captain but much to Keith’s dismay he stole Lone Fox and reregistered her under a Swedish flag. Keith eventually discovered that Lone Fox was being operated out of Venezuela and in March 1988, he set off there to recover his boat, by now in a terrible state.

Keith moved her to Marina del Rey in California in 1990 for restoration, which continued from 1992 under Christopher Von Trampe, yachtsman and master yacht restorer who had moved to Ventura, California, to set up a workshop. When in 1997 Keith became weary of the project, Christopher acquired Lone Fox for himself.

He embarked on a comprehensive five-year restoration project with his customary enthusiasm – refastening the hull below the waterline; replacing much of the wood and metalwork; rebuilding the engine; repairing systems and electronics; and finally re-rigging.

By the end of the project she had been completely restored, apart from the aluminium masts, and brought back to the equivalent of her original Lloyd’s +100A1 32

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

rating. During the restoration Christopher occasionally managed to race her, and in 2000 and 2001 won the San Francisco Master Mariner’s Regatta.

With the work complete Christopher sailed the yacht to St Barts in 2003 where she was used for chartering.

However, in 2004 he put her up for sale.

The buyer, Ira Epstein, after an early passion for sailing on the fresh waters of Lake Michigan, had spent his mid to late twenties sailing, chartering, delivering and maintaining classic yachts – and growing to love the Caribbean. But in 1974 Ira delivered Lord Jim, a 1936 Alden schooner, from Aruba to San Francisco and thence found his way onto the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange for the next 20 years, before deciding that a change of direction was needed to enable him to fulfil his lifelong dream of owning a classic yacht.

Ira first came across Lone Fox online in 2003 and though she seemed far out of his reach he could not stop admiring her. In 2004 he couldn’t resist flying down to St Maarten to check her out and sail over to St Barts.

However, he was not quite ready to make a full commitment. A five-month trip on Lord Jim through the Strait of Magellan to Mar del Plata in Argentina convinced him he needed to experience more sea time.

When he finally saw Lone Fox again, in Newport, Rhode Island, in August 2006 she lay at the end of Bannister’s Wharf and appeared to be signalling to him “What are you looking for? I’m right here!” He was finally ready to commit to her, a decision that would change the course of his life. With all the formalities complete Ira proudly set off with his new yacht in November to begin their new life in St Barts, at Gustavia.

LONE FOX

cory silken

As the new caretaker of Lone Fox Ira took his new responsibility very seriously. Under his ownership Lone Fox completed her first charter season in St Barts with a second place and ‘Best Charter Yacht Performance Award’ in the 2007 Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta.

In June 2010 she had a rather intriguing assignment – chartered for three days to make a film for ‘Bavaria’, a non-alcoholic beer, which was to be shown in the Arab states where drinking alcohol is customarily prohibited.

You can’t help but wonder what the late Colonel Whitbread, who headed one of Europe’s largest brewing empires, would have thought of this.

Ira decided to take Lone Fox up the US East Coast in the late summer of 2010 to escape the predicted fierce Caribbean hurricane season. However, while under charter in Maine she was sailed the wrong side of a mark and grounded at about 3.5 knots. Unfortunately, this excruciating saga was not over yet as her skipper, a former skipper of the America’s Cup challenger Gretel

II, managed to ground her again on the other side of the same reef, but this time at a hefty 7 knots. I’m exceedingly happy to report that the old Fox did not leak one drop after these two incidents. However, instead of a sunny charter season in St Barts, she was forced to spend a chilly arctic winter in Camden, Maine, tied up in repair work and sorting out insurance issues.

Above: At Antigua, 2009. Below left: Lone Fox’s current owner Ira Epstein at her wheel

AntiguAn rewArd After a rather troublesome winter passage Lone Fox finally made it back to the Caribbean with only two days to spare before the 2011 Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta.

Following their disastrous winter Ira and Lone Fox were amply rewarded with some pretty amazing results: First Overall in the Classic & Vintage Class; Best Charter Yacht; and the Panerai Trophy.

In 2012, at the special 25th Anniversary Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, Lone Fox continued her spectacular performance with the fastest cumulative time, once more being presented with the prestigious Panerai Trophy, especially impressive with a fleet that included the 140ft (42.7m) German Frers-designed Rebecca; Elena, the 136ft (41.5m) Herreschoff; Eilean, the 72ft (22m) Fife; and Tuiga, the 15-Metre Fife. Her victory over Tuiga was particularly satisfying as they had wintered together at Robertson’s yard in the 1960s.

Lone Fox is a truly lasting testament to the vision of Colonel Whitbread, the skill of her designer, the expertise of the yard where she was built, and the dedication of her numerous owners. In particular, the enthusiasm of her current owner and his successful charter company have given the old Fox a new lease of life.

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PUIG VELA cLAssIcA BARcELONA

SpaniSh main

event

The Catalans have their own style of classic Mediterranean racing. Guy Venables was there

A

PREVIOUS PAGE NICO MARTINEZ

NICO MARTINEZ

s the A319 jet banked low in its final approach over the Mediterranean the seaward passengers gasped and cooed.

Below us, unzipping the sea in crisp white ‘V’s were around twenty of the world’s finest yachts, spinnakers up, mains like well starched collars, puffing out their chests on a hard run. I kicked myself for having packed my camera in the hold.

Once in the grand surrounds of Real Club Náutico de Barcelona I met the crews coming off their boats. The arrival of a regatta’s worth of classic boats always puts quite a polish on a marina, and TV crews had arrived with crowds of people taking photographs. As I was wearing my Classic Boat badge the crews confessed

36

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

information freely, and cheerfully complained of any rule infringement by others. Later, at the bar it will be “Why don’t you do more articles about my boat?”

Carlos and Maria, the effortlessly efficient organisers, showed me where to help myself to everything and I settled in to a night of partying gently ’til 4am in Catalan style. It was explained to me by a local sailor that you had to party until late at night as then the next day, you can blame any seasickness on a hangover. Crew members drew charts on the tables with beer-wet fingers and expatriate Brits talked fluently in Euros and metres.

Talk on the quayside was about the tragic dismasting of the lovely sloop Peter which, apparently, wanting to race in the classic category and in compliance with the strict regulations, took the epoxy strengthening off her

Previous spread: Irene VIII Above: Moonbeam of Fife

NICO MARTINEZ

PUIG VELA CLASSICA BARCELONA

GIPSY From the Royal Yacht Club of Santander comes Gipsy, owned

by Ricardo Rubio, a 39ft (11.9m) gaff-rigged ketch. Built in 1927 and based on a design by Colin Archer, she was the only boat built for civil use by the Echevarrieta y Larrinaga shipyard in Cรกdiz and was numbered 16, thus the first boat to be built after the Juan Sebastiรกn de Elcano, flagship of the Spanish Navy. Once finished she was shipped to Bilbao where she remained until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Miguel Sans, a Spanish sailing professional of the time and owner of Altair, skippered Gipsy during the Civil War, using her as a spy vessel for the National side around the bays of Creus and La Nao. She was also used to smuggle nationals

to the safety of France and arms back into Spain. Shrapnel marks can still be seen on the mizzen mast. The crew showed us a piece of ball bullet taken from the mast, which, interestingly for the late 1930s but unsurprisingly for the Spanish Civil War, seemed to be from a flintlock.

At the end of the war, she passed through various hands and was finally acquired by the Rubio-Vilar family in 1951, where she still remains to this day. Gipsy was fully restored between 2002 and 2006, on the express wishes of her current owner to the precise original specifications.

LOA 39ft (11.9m) BEAM 11ft 6in (3.5m) dRAuGhT 6ft 6in (2m)

GuY VENABLES

GuY VENABLES

Right: Happy winners at the prizegiving; Alba; The Spanish yacht ensign

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

37

Sperry Sails

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Particular area of interest is light to medium displacement racing yachts & keelboats.

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Tom Owen • Classic Yacht Restoration & Wooden Boatbuilding Unit 4, Windmill Ind. Est., Fowey, Cornwall PL23 1HB www.classicyachtrestoration.co.uk Email: tom@classicyachtrestoration.co.uk • Tel: +44 7976 403120

PUIG VELA CLASSICA BARCELONA

“We placed ourselves by a marker buoy and let them all sail past us”

ANNE BONNY Possibly the only Fife of Welsh extraction built in Spain (apart from her two successors) Anne Bonny is based on the 1935 Wm Fife III design (No 809) for the Royal Anglesey YC. Builder Niklaus Stoll, a Swiss from Basel, learned his trade in Sweden, then at the IBTC in Lowestoft, honing it at various yards around Europe before opening his workshop near Barcelona with the desire “to build a classic boat the classic way”, casting a lead keel, steaming oak timbers, sawing up a mahogany log for planking, using 2,000 copper rivets... He launched her in 2001 and sails her locally on the Costa Brava while running his boatyard and “longing for the magic moment” when he can build another classic boat. So far he has built two to the same design, Chi, 2003, for a German owner and Vivi, 2007, sailing in the Balearics under the USA flag.

LOD 24ft 6in (7.5m) LWL 16ft (4.9m) BEAM 6ft 3in (1.9m) DRAUGHT 3ft 4in (1.0m) SAIL AREA 30m2 (323sqft) www.classicyachtsconstruction.com

NICO MARTINEZ

Above: Zacapa, Frers-designed 36-footer named after the rum used to celebrate her purchase

spreaders so they drove into the mast and snapped it.

All the while four silent men in crisp white shirts shook gin cocktails for us without dropping pace for six straight hours. The lavish umbrella of hospitality shown to us from the Puig family was diligently ever-present.

Rumours circulated about the prospect of tomorrow’s wind, locally known as the Garbi, and every point of the compass was mentioned apart from the north. Schedules are tight as Rambla de Mar, the swinging footbridge over the marina, opens every half an hour to let the boats in and out. If you miss it, you miss your race.

The next morning there was a brisk northerly wind that picked up the waves and ruffled the hair of the palm trees. The swell had picked up considerably and there were surfers in the bay. The lack of a significant tide let

the waves roll in calmly without the sudden lurch of a sucking undertow. I was offered a place on a RIB support boat with three other battle-worn Spanish yachting journalists who wore those Arabic neck scarves and smoked continuously. We suppressed our wry grins as the Spanish television crew began setting up a tripod in the RIB next to us, to the skyward glances of the driver. We lurched out into the bay and the races began in bright sunlight in front of a delighted Barcelona beach.

With four different classes sailing at once and a choppy sea it was hard to discern what was happening, so we placed ourselves by a marker buoy and let them all sail past us, masts tilting, as if at windmills. The buoys are where the cameramen like to be as that’s where you get the money shot, everyone grinding and sweating at CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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NICO mARTINEZ

PUIG VELA CLASSICA BARCELONA

Islander Islander, a 56ft 5in (17.2m) auxiliary cruising ketch, was built in 1936-7 by Dickie & Sons of Tarbet, Scotland, and designed by GL Watson for shipowner Archibald J Barr of Kilmacolm, Inverclyde near Glasgow.

Her frames are of British oak and the 1½in (38mm) thick planking and the deck are of Burmese teak, air-dried for eight years. Barr owned her until 1939, and then again from 1950 to 1954. In between Islander was owned by Sir Knowles Edge, an industrialist from the north east of England.

In 1954, Barr sold her to Ronald Strauss who in 1964 sold her to Tom Blackwell, retired merchant captain and heir to the Cross and Blackwell fortunes, who set a solo world navigation record in her. Between 1969 and 1971 he circumnavigated the world twice but was thwarted on his

third attempt in Durban due to terminal illness. He sold the boat and donated much of the money to the Point Yacht Club of Durban, which spent it on a new restaurant which they named The Islander Room.

The new owner, Durban lawyer John P mathews, got her as far as the Canary Islands where the crew jumped ship after waiting for three months to be paid. Eventually she was discovered in Barcelona in 1981 and bought in 1989 by Ricardo Albiana who, after tracking down the original drawings from GL Watson, restored her to the match fit and beautiful 76-year-old cruising ketch that she had always been.

LOA 56ft 5in (17.2m) BEAm 10ft 10in (3.3m) DRAuGHT 6ft 6in (2m)

GuY VENABLES

Above left to right: Islander’s owner meets the media; preparing to sail; barmen at their work

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once while the wake turns in a wide frothy arc. Alba, with her lime green hull, was just in the lead with Samarkand in close second. Then Alba slipped back; a line had fallen over the side and tantalisingly trailed in the water for over a mile, seen only by us. Small mistakes like that cost races. Only the day before Moonbeam IV had won by just two seconds.

At the end of the races Manitou ended up with the trophy in her Marconi class, whilst Malabar X took the gaff-rigged class. Alba won the classic class and Moonbeam III went home with the big boats trophy.

That evening, tickled by the warm breeze, we laid ourselves to the mercy of the silent barmen while the prize-giving took place and a cover band set up, the lead singer of which was an Olympic skiff sailor.

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

NICO mARTINEZ

GuY VENABLES

Whilst studying the results board a couple of skippers showed me a light-hearted equation they’d devised to correlate the placing of the boats with the number of charterers on board as crew. On the way back to my hotel, under a 45ft (13.7m) Lichtenstein sculpture I sat on a bench and drank Orujo, a Galician firewater, with an old man who sold magic tricks and told me all about Barcelona, this fascinating city, “the great enchantress” a medieval centre for ropemaking, symbol of Catalan independence and a place so filled with culture the concrete never sets under the newly laid statues. As one sailor put it, “The one thing about this regatta that makes it far better than any of the others in the Med is that it’s in Barcelona. And Barcelona is just excellent, it’s not some snooty resort, Barcelona is for everybody.”

International Paint Announces New Antifouling Range ®

International Paint is proud to announce the launch of a new antifouling range, with improved formulations designed to be compliant with the Biocidal Products Directives, whilst providing the best fouling protection.

At International we are constantly upgrading our products to ensure that they have the best antifouling performance, whilst having a reduced environmental impact and representing the safest option for our customers.

International is leading the way; producing new products that are specially formulated to comply with all current and future legislation but still providing the high performance that is required by all boat owners.

Here's how our range will change: Micron® Extra will become NEW Micron Extra 2

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Interspeed® Ultra will become NEW Interspeed Ultra 2

Bottomcoat and Navigator® will become NEW Boatguard EU

For more information about these changes to our range visit our stand at the London Boat Show or phone our technical helpline on 01489 775050.

Use antifouling paints safely. Always read the label and product information before use. , International, the AkzoNobel logo and all product names mentioned in this advertorial are trademarks of AkzoNobel. © AkzoNobel N.V. 2013.

Also brand new in the range: Cruiser Bright White An all new antifouling designed for a bright white finish in medium to low fouling areas.

READING ROOM

emily harris

THE SAILORS’

A Southwold institution, it’s stacked with local marine history. Emily Harris dropped in for a cup of tea with its chairman John “Dusso” Winter

SAILORS’ READING ROOM

“Now a place of rest and reflection, it has hundreds of diverse objects”

T

he old, cold brass door latch on the Sailors’ Reading Room is worn; my numb thumb hardly fits on the casting as I push it down to enter what is a warm refuge from the bitter northeasterly wind carrying clouds laden with snow.

Inside Southwold’s famous chapel-like room, John “Dusso” Winter, chairman of the Sailors’ Reading Room was sitting close to the heater under the clock that provides a deep, steady pace of ‘tick-tock-tick-tock’ – an aid to absorbing the object-filled room.

Two seemingly retired gentlemen were browsing newspapers. John says that anybody can be a member here. “We’re not into sexism,” he said. There was me thinking only fishermen and seamen were allowed in as members but no, and it’s just £12 annual membership.

John went on to say, “We put the world to rights, or try to… We spread the word of who’s dead.”

Extinct longshorEmEn

emily harris

emily harris

On that note the walls are covered in photographs and paintings of the now extinct generations of longshoremen who worked as fishermen on this stretch of the East Coast – it’s like being in a shrine.

John, descended from a long line of Southwold men, inherited his father’s nickname, “Dusso”.

All these men of the sea have nicknames it seems – “Winkle” Hurr, “Slooper” Hurr, “Brushy” Watson. Looking around the room, you find the same surnames cropping up again and again. John reckons there were 60 Southwold fishing families called Palmer in the late 1800s.

Generations passed on valuable seamanship and fishing oaths, said John. For example the Herring Packer’s Oath: “You shall make oath that you will well and truly execute your office of a packer of herring within the town of Southwold and mind the laying of all herrings and that they shall be merchantable and that the vessels or casks shall be full and equally packed in every part. So help you God.” John’s father was working the sea’s fruits for his own father from the age of 12. Later in life, he worked in the harbour, when inboard engines cut out the task of winching boats up the beach and longshore fishing was on its way out. John’s grandfather, Harry “Dusso” Winter, who always wore a white smock apparently, had a longshore punt. Her name, Live and Let Live, was passed down to John’s father.

It is obvious that John considers this room home, and a place to remember those lost to the North Sea, which is constantly audible through the single-paned glass. As I talk to him the pounding of the sea, induced by the onshore wind, augments that melodically paced tick-tock.

This reading room was built under the strong influence of two women. Charlotte Ellis, the daughter of Southwold Harbour’s engineer, once asked the local Vicar: “Why don’t the fishermen come to church?” The fishermen’s answer was simple: they couldn’t miss a salvage or pilot job so they had to stay close to the beach. She instigated a bible reading class for fishermen in what was the old Lifeboat hut near the pier.

The second woman was the wife of Captain Rayley RN who had died in 1862. She built the Sailors’ Reading Room to keep fisherman out of the pubs, but together near the beach and ready if a ship should need a boat for the pilot to guide her into the Thames Estuary.

Now a place of rest and reflection, this room has hundreds of diverse objects which tie together a rich history of industrial Britain from the mid-1800s, the vessels they raced in the Victorian regattas, and the introduction of the engine in the 20th Century.

There are three large figureheads fixed in the apex of the dark wood interior. A colourful mermaid and another female look out to sea through the windows.

They were all washed up on this coast and keep the company of the hundreds of longshoremen, sailors and cliffmen that haunt these walls in the form of donated photographs, paintings and artefacts.

There are ship models too, including the famous beach yawl, the Bittern. Beach yawls, lightly built, were used for salvage and delivering pilots out to ships; the Bittern was 48ft (14.6m).

From the late 18th Century, the beaches off Southwold, and probably Norfolk too, were owned by companies which salvaged off their sections with their syndicate-owned beach yawls. Three sections of the cliffs in Southwold – New York, Long Island and North or Kilcock Cliff – gave their names to beach companies.

Opposite: The Reading Room is filled with figureheads, photographs and other artefacts.

Centre: Scale model of the beach yawl Bittern

a fast bEach yawl The Bittern is famous here in Southwold because of her fast lines. Built in 1890, she carried an enormous sail area with a ridiculously low freeboard that enabled the crew to jump in once she slipped down the steep shore.

Some say she was the fastest, some say she was beatable by a beach yawl out of Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft.

These beach yawls were starting to race regularly in the era of the Victorian holiday when steamship transport made it convenient for middle-class tourists from London to discover the East Coast. John tells me that the old boys recall the helm of the Bittern, “Winner” Smith, returning to Southwold having raced her in the Kessingham Regatta. “Did you win?” a local asked. “I don’t know, we see ’em when we started, we never see any more of ’em, so I suppose we must of done!” John says Southwold locals never boast.

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Carlo Riva

GENIUS STILL AT WORK At 91 the master boatbuilder is still fighting business battles. By Gerald Guetat; photos by Henri Thibault

CARLO RIVA

O

n the shores of Lake Iseo, set between Milan and Venice, at the foot of hills planted with cypresses and crowned with medieval villages, where the road to Sarnico makes a slight detour away from the banks of the lake, stands a small abandoned building. It marks the original site of the small shipyard founded by the Riva brothers around 1860; by the 1900s the building had become a trattoria run by another member of the family, grandmother of the industrial and artistic genius destined to transform the family name, and the image of leisure motorboating.

Carlo Riva is still, at the age of 91, involved in the boating industry. He was born in Sarnico in 1922, and in the early 1950s built the striking white industrial centre that was to house the adventure of his life, and mark the break with the old ways of his father Serafino. As Carlo explains: “I lived in total opposition to him whom I saw bitterly toil to produce one boat at a time. The work was hard, dirty and produced very little income, especially when making speedboats for wealthy gentlemen who rarely appreciated our efforts.”

In Italy after the Second World War, Carlo read and reread all the American yachting magazines, dissecting one by one the coloured advertisements for yards such as Chris-Craft, which produced motorboats like Cadillacs.

Serafino Riva’s son knew he could never succeed his father without causing incessant disputes over the traditional crafts of a boatbuilder: “I was convinced that there would soon be a market here for high quality and very safe boats, but industrially produced.”

So he built this new ultra-modern plant, buying his engines in America. In 1954, he inaugurated with pride, tinged with a little apprehension, the first phase of the splendid boatyard which remains, even today, an example of daring architecture and rationality. But to do this, he had to borrow a lot of money at a time when, in Italy, one could still end up in prison for debt.

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CARLO RIVA

“I was very lucky to get away with putting myself in so many potentially difficult situations”

archive photos courtesy of carlo riva

Above: Carlo Riva’s vision was one of luxury boat production on an industrial scale

46

A dreamer and an idealist, but also a hard worker and extreme perfectionist, Carlo Riva now had the working tool that measured up to his search for excellence. An unobtrusive observer of society, he knew how to capture the collective mood, but was always ready for the challenge of a business risk. “I was very lucky to get away with putting myself in so many potentially very difficult situations,” he admits.

Thus, from the mid-1950s, quantity production of his splendid mahogany runabouts was already a reality, but without all the desired reliability and profitability. “I wanted to improve traditional construction, which was not only long and expensive to assemble but also to maintain. So I tried to transform one of my first models with a marine plywood bottom, but it was much too thin and it sank during a sea trial at Portofino. There was more fear than harm, but to me, who everybody laughed at because I was born on a lake, it was an embarrassment and a new challenge.”

With the motto “there must be a solution”, he founded Marine Plywood in 1956 with an engineer specializing in prefabricated plywood panels, to enable his boats to safely confront the waves. Marine Plywood spearheaded, for many years, progress in the manufacturing of wooden Rivas.

A year later, Riva created the RAM company based in premises adjoining his large production site. The object was to give his network of dealers the necessary knowhow for the proper maintenance of models, and to provide a maximum guarantee to the customer. The

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

latter, being the centre of much care and attention, would thus be placed in the many expert hands that made up the “Boat Service”, a chain of reference shops distributed initially between Italy and the French Riviera. At the height of the 50s economic boom, RAM set standards for restorations, sent out original spare parts, trained authorised personnel and repaired boats to their original factory condition – a first in Europe.

the monte carlo tunnel However, Riva the entrepreneur could not be satisfied by simply delegating his power or knowledge. Believing the saying “one is never better served than by oneself” it was in Monte Carlo, that Carlo wanted to establish his new “Boat Service”. But the port of Monaco had no space to spare. Carlo needed space to store, repair and refurbish his boats and found it by digging a large tunnel more than 100m (328ft) long below the property of Prince Rainier. This fabulous cavern, like a precious wine or cigar cellar, was inaugurated in 1959, after amicably replacing many windows of the Grimaldi palace, blown out by explosions caused during the construction.

This opening onto the Mediterranean led to the next phase, a true motor yacht with living space: “Freddy Heineken came to me at the 1960 London Boat Show.

He convinced me to go and build my projects of yachts in his native Holland. So, I went to de Vries and I was immediately impressed by the honesty and seriousness of this great nation of navigators who built their ships in steel.” The hulls were designed in the Netherlands while

RIVA ARCHIVE RIVA ARCHIVE

Above: Carlo, aged 90, at the wheel of a Riva Aquarama, with his futuristic 1953 boatyard in the background Right, from top: Carlo aged 3 on Lake Iseo; the family’s original yard, early in the 20th century; an aerial view of Carlo’s 1953 Riva boatyard

RIVA ARCHIVE

the superstructure and furnishings were designed in Sarnico. Thus, with large yachting in its infancy in Europe, the first Caravelle was delivered in 1961, as elegant and refined as a Riva, and as robust and seaworthy as a de Vries. Seven models, from 71ft 6in to 73ft 10in (21.8m to 22.5m) and powered by Rolls-Royce engines, were launched through to 1965.

By the mid-1960s, Riva knew that he would sooner or later have to evolve his sports boat range using GRP. American competition was becoming too strong. At the Genoa Boat Show in 1966, his stand had a huge model of the futuristic new buildings that would house the assembly of a new era of Rivas. Reference models purchased from two yards in Miami, Bertram and the legendary Don Aronow’s Magnum, were put to the test.

“I was amazed by the poor quality of the Magnum. So I used an axe to break up the interior and redo everything in a style worthy of my firm. I also wrote to Aronow to tell him my thoughts, it almost all went wrong.”

In 1969 Italy suffered a violent new social movement which was to change the Riva destiny. Carlo Riva has a great capacity for empathy towards those for whom he is responsible. But he does not tolerate what he believes to be betrayal. When his boatyard which employed up to two hundred and fifty people, better paid than elsewhere, went on strike under pressure from local unionists, his reaction was sharp. At the time, the American company Whittaker, owner of Bertram of which Riva began to produce two models, was proposing to take a small equity stake. Disgusted with the attitude of the unions,

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CARLO RIVA

Riva told the Americans, “It’s all or nothing”. Two weeks later, the Riva yard came under American control.

After having changed hands several times since (including a decade of British ownership with Vickers), the business returned to the Italian flag in 2000 as part of the Ferretti group. In 2012 control of Ferretti, and 75% of ownership, passed to the Chinese state-owned Shandong Heavy Industry Group in a move which it is hoped will end periodic lay-offs and introduce a new era of stability for the 200 workers at the Sarnico yard.

As for Carlo, having built more than 4,000 boats in less than 20 years, in 1971 he set up the Carlo Riva Yachting Corporation for the design and construction of large yachts. He also retained ownership of the Boat Service group which employs about a hundred people, selling and servicing boats from the most prestigious brands – including Riva. Their most important location is Monaco, but there are branches on the French Riviera at Cannes and Saint-Tropez. In Italy, there is of course RAM in Sarnico – and Porto Carlo Riva in Rapallo.

battles over the marina This marina, built on the model of Port Canto in Cannes and completed in 1975, was the very first private marina in Italy. Carlo modestly admits “I did not want to give it my name but Pierre Canto told me that it was essential to gain the confidence of the clients.” Today, it is the fate of his marina that most preoccupies Carlo. Its building required some heroic battles with local authorities, and now problems piling up due to a retroactive tax system are threatening to strangle the company. Carlo fights tirelessly against administrative dogmatism, but this is, undoubtedly, the worst storm that he has had to face throughout his career. So when we talk with him about 48

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

his next vacation, he makes a wry face: “That’s what the doctor keeps telling me, but he has no idea what it is to create a business and especially to defend it against the ignorance of bureaucrats.”

Yet he is in good hands in business, with two daughters, a son-in-law and a nephew, all gathered under the family banner. One daughter, Lia Riva, presides over the Monaco Boat Service and its French branches.

Son-in-law Patrizio Ferrarese, formerly the manager of the Monaco branch, is now at RAM, the holy of holies at Sarnico (CB284), and an 85% shareholder, with nephew Anselmo Vigani, as director. This historic site not only restores the precious mahogany Rivas, but is also currently developing new projects and boat designs.

achievements honoured Carlo’s exceptional achievements were honoured last year when Italy’s President Napolitano formalised a new a national educational programme in tribute to the excellence of Italian style in the applied arts and design, with Carlo sitting prominently alongside such other living symbols as the master jeweller Buccellati and the famous textile designer Missoni.

Carlo, 91, continues to come and work every day at his office in the Carlo Riva Yachting Corp. He finds some time to answer the many letters from all over the world with emotional testimonies from grateful Riva owners. He also keeps an eye on what is going on next door at RAM. A small connecting door allows direct access to its vast hangars full of varnished mahogany wonders, and the restoration workshops themselves. A way, perhaps, to measure the long and successful path made since 1953, paved with hard work, optimism and love for things done right at the right moment.

Above left: Stencils used to identify parts of different models.

Above top: Carlo with daughters Pia, left, and Lia. Above: With a model of the Caravelle, his first motor yacht

Boat Collection Manager Circa £30k per annum Initial two-year contract

for sale

Beautiful Classic 1964 riva super florida

Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust seeks an experienced boathandler to manage and care for its historic Boat Collection in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The collection comprises 25 vessels, including two WW 2 powerboats HSL102 and MGB81. Some are regularly used while others will be on display to the visiting public.

The post-holder will be required to demonstrate and carry out skilled wooden boatbuilding and repairs to the boats, instruct the Trust’s Boatbuilding Apprentices and its team of Volunteers, and manage and direct their work programmes.

The appointment will be for an initial two years during implementation of the International Boatbuilding Training College Portsmouth, dependent on Round 2 approval of grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in June 2013.

To receive the full job description please contact the Trust’s Personnel Manager on 023 9282 0921 or email lc@pnbpt.co.uk To apply please send a full CV with covering letter to the Personnel Manager, Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, 19 College Road, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth PO1 3LJ or email lc@pnbpt.co.uk

In excellent condition, lying in Rolle, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The boat is stored indoors and only in the water when used.

Hull number is 688. Chrysler V8 4.5L engine, 475 hours.

Available with berth in Rolle, if required.

(Length 6.07 m, Beam 2.0 m, Weight 1350kg)

Closing date 28 February 2013

(70,000 Swiss Francs; £46,000; €58,000) Contact Kevin at higgikev@bluewin.ch or tel: +41 79 629 1427

Riva Revival UK Ltd Specialists in Riva Sales and Restoration Projects

For those who want to admire a Riva every day, we sell beautiful models showing each little detail (even the name of your own Riva if you so wish)

Aquarama Special 1971-96

Aquariva-33

Ariston 1950-74

Super-Ariston 1963-74

www.rivarevival.co.uk Email info@rivarevival.co.uk Tel +44 (0)1550 777537 Mob 0780 830 6621 For further information please go to

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

49

INSIDE THE

CRUISING

ASSOCIATION CLUB VISIT

The internet has given the 105-year-old organisation a new lease of life, reports Peter Willis

CRUISING ASSOCIATION

I

red dots represent places on which information is held

GARY BLAKE

The CA Library – now known as the Information Centre.

Much of its contents can now be accessed online, top right; the

t’s taken more than a hundred years, but the Cruising Association, whose founders included Edwardian yachting luminaries such as EF Knight and Claud Worth, has at last fully realised their original vision thanks to the arrival of the internet – and with more than a little help from one of today’s great sailors, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston.

As its name suggests, the CA is not your regular yacht club. It was started, in December 1908, with the aim of enabling cruising yachtsmen to share information about sailing areas, ports visited and so on. In particular it was initiated as a defence against rapacious ‘longshoremen’ who saw yachtsmen as an easy means of lining their pockets with outrageous charges and inflated repair costs. This was at a time when the social demographic of yachting was moving downward from the well-to-do into the middle classes, and yacht cruising – as distinct from racing, which was the main raison d’être of existing yacht clubs – was gaining popularity.

The first aim of the CA therefore was to compile a register of ‘honest boatmen’ in different ports. It quickly supplemented this with a system of ‘Honorary Local Representatives’ in ports – resident members to whom visiting yachtsmen could apply for help and guidance. Its first handbook, published at the end of 1909, contained details of recommended boatmen, facilities and passage notes for 85 ports (which had risen to 470 by the 1912 edition) as well as tide tables and Morse code.

Its aim was always to be a mass consumerist organisation as distinct from the already-established Royal Cruising Club, which made a point (and still does) of limiting its membership to 400. At the end of its first year the CA’s membership was 240, and by 1914 it had grown to over 500. Today, the membership, despite many ups and downs, is over 4,000 and rising.

The CA’s 105-year passage from its launch to the present day has not been without its headwinds, storms, doldrums and shallows. The First World War, so soon after it had begun, and then the Second, both meant an CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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CRUISING ASSOCIATION

“CA House, by Limehouse Basin, welcomes thirsty, hungry and tired yachtsmen after a thrash up the Thames”

GARY BLAKE

The greatest single legacy Hanson left the CA was its library. This was a mixture of practical sailing works, much consulted and borrowed by members, and fine antiquarian books about the sea, dating back as far as the 16th century. New members were encouraged to donate a book when they joined, but the building of the collection was the result of Hanson’s work (and to an extent, probably his money).

By the late 1980s, however, the library had become as much a burden as a treasure to the CA, incurring ever-rising costs but locked away from the members for want of permanent staff with the necessary expertise. At this time the CA was based in Ivory House at St Katharine Docks, with a lease shortly to expire.

The solution to both problems came in the shape of an agreement for Cambridge University to buy and house the 600 volumes that comprise the antiquarian part of the collection, via a grant from English Heritage.

They are cared for properly, and CA members enjoy access to them. The resultant funds enabled the CA to build its own clubhouse overlooking Limehouse Basin, hard by the lock that connects the Thames to the canal system at Limehouse.

Unlike the association’s previous addresses – one of which, for many years, was above Baker Street station – CA House has good facilities to welcome the thirsty,

Three presidents: Sir Robin Knox-Johnston at this year’s flag officers’ lunch with the committee he set up to restore the CA’s fortunes: his successor Stuart Bradley, and, right, Stuart’s successor and current president Desmond Scott, who took over at the end of 2012

Below left: Reference works and mementoes in the library Below: The bronze bust of Herbert Hanson

GARY BLAKE

The library

STUART BRADLEY

interruption to its members’ way of life, and on both occasions the association was mothballed on a ‘care and maintenance’ basis for the duration. Membership inevitably suffered – in 1950, in the aftermath of World War II when yachting had still not returned to normal, it was just 521. That it survived at all, at any rate in the way that it did, was largely due to the energy and dedication of one man: HJ (Herbert) Hanson.

For nearly 50 years, from its foundation until his death at the age of 81 in 1956, Hanson served the CA and to a great extent shaped its character, first as its treasurer, then for many years as full-time secretary and finally as president.

hungry and tired yachtsman, and has provided a welcome refuge to most Classic Boat staff at some stage after a weary flog up the Thames (or in one case around the North London canal loop). There’s a bar, with good, reasonably-priced meals, as well as overnight cabins which members can rent.

In addition there’s a large meeting room where they run a lively programme of winter talks, and RYA evening classes, plus various small committee rooms and of course the library – also known as the Hanson Room and nowadays the Information Centre. A bust of Hanson looks down on the collection.

Nevertheless, by the CA’s centenary in 2008, it was becoming clear that CA House, far from solving the association’s problems, had in some ways added to them.

The building was eating money, particularly after a contract to manage berthing in the marina for British Waterways had expired. Membership numbers were falling, and even the bar – supposedly an improvement on the ‘honesty box’ at Ivory House – was losing money.

In fact, when Sir Robin Knox-Johnston accepted an invitation to become centenary year president, he found an organisation that was “going to go bust in three months”. The current president, Desmond Scott, who took over in December, confirms this. “It had been a disaster waiting to happen for about 14 years.”

Sir Robin, who had been an honorary member for many years, was invited mainly as a figurehead for the centenary but ended up providing very much more than that. He set up a committee, consisting of two then vice-presidents, Stuart Bradley, who succeeded him as president, and Desmond Scott, to sort things out.

Desmond, a former marketing director with Barnardos and other charity sector bodies, is full of praise for Sir CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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“The net shares information quickly and it cuts down on data use – an expensive commodity when you’re at sea” Robin’s leadership at that time. “Robin was absolutely brilliant. I’ve never had so much meaningful support and counsel from anybody as I’ve had from him.” Likewise Sir Robin gives credit to Desmond and Stuart: “Two very good vice-presidents; between them they sorted it out – I guarded their backs when the inevitable criticisms came.”

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Above: The bar at CA House. Below left: Looking up information with an iPad on board.

Below right: CA House, Limehouse Basin – first port of call when coming up the Thames

GARY BLAKE

GARY BLAKE

The main salvation proved to lie in improving members’ services by embracing modern technology – in effect, putting the wealth of information, which to a great extent is supplied by the CA members themselves, online, so members can access it wherever they are in the world. This storehouse of information has always been at the heart of what the CA is for, but until the digital age it resided in cardboard folders in the library and a member who wanted to plan a cruise in the Med, say, or the Baltic, had to trek to CA house to look it up. With alternative sources of digitised information available, this was one reason why the membership had been falling, to about 3,000 (from a high point of 5,000 in the late 1980s) at the time of the centenary.

Now the whole thing is online, and there’s even an iPhone app (CAptain’s Mate – see what they did with CA there?) soon to be extended to Android phones. A CA member sitting in his or her cockpit can call up details of the harbour they are approaching, the phone number of the Honorary Local Representative, unbiased advice on where to eat (and where not), and the sort of local knowledge that it’s otherwise so hard to come by.

“I only half believed the value of this,” admits Desmond, “until last year, when we bought a motor cruiser to take to the south of France. We had the Navicartes but it wasn’t till we actually got there that we found out what they didn’t cover – and the CA guide does! Moorings in great detail, including depths, and for the many villages now without shops, when the baker and butcher’s vans come round, and where they park.”

In addition the sea area sections have networks that enable members to keep in touch while cruising. Janet Grimwade is secretary of the Biscay Section. She recalls

GARY BLAKE

going online

when a member discovered that marina charges had shot up, blowing a big hole in his cruising budget. “He went on the net to warn others, and in no time another member had responded, to say he’d discovered a newly-opened marina that was cheaper. The net shares information quickly and it cuts down on data use – an expensive commodity when you’re at sea.”

The Grimwades keep their boat, the 40ft (12.2m) Wizard of Paget, in Portsall, northwest Finistere. “Being part of the CA literally broadened our horizons,” admits Judith. “It gave us ideas and opportunities we wouldn’t have considered otherwise. If we hadn’t become members we’d still be sailing on the East Coast.”

The combined result of these innovations and some overdue housekeeping measures around CA House means membership is going up again – around 4,500 at present – and the CA is debt-free with money in the bank. Even the evenings at Limehouse are a bit more lively. Desmond can remember when the winter talks would attract audiences in single figures. “The talks haven’t necessarily improved, but now we regularly get 80 and you have to book. When the Chandlers (the couple captured by Somali pirates) came they had to give their talk twice, to a hundred-plus each time.”

For the CA, the arrival of the internet age has at last enabled it fully to realise the purpose for which it was originally formed. “It has always been an information exchange,” says Sir Robin, “and one that relies on members to provide information for other members.”

Desmond Scott agrees. “The level of information provided by the members is extraordinary.” Impressively the digitisation was handled by volunteers, and has produced what Sir Robin describes as “a pretty sophisticated system.” About 350 “active volunteers” do the groundwork according to Desmond. He adds: “The whole thing about the CA is this Corinthian idea that everybody contributes and everybody benefits.”

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LIVING ON A BARGE

ROB STURGES PHOTOGRAPHY

O

n that warm autumn day in 2009 when I went to view Ilka she was lying alongside the marina wall in the Exeter Ship Canal Basin. She was fully rigged and looked a picture – a Dutch zeetjalk barge, originally twin-masted, and built in 1904, probably for carrying coal, grain and other agricultural products. Flat bottomed, she was substantial enough to ply the Baltic and up to Norway.

Now she’d been converted to a liveaboard, and I had come to see her with a view to taking her to London.

Ilka was my second viewing – the first had been half the size (and price), but the incumbent tenant couldn’t stand up inside at any point, it was seriously shabby, and I was in and out of there in less than ten seconds.

At 92ft (28m) by 16ft 6in (5.1m) and with more than 6ft 6in (2m) headroom throughout most of the hold, Ilka was a grand Edwardian lady, built by the Zwartsluis boatyard in the Netherlands. She was, to say the least, an exciting prospect – four cabins (one en suite), two heads (one with a bath, one with a shower), a saloon, the galley in the wheelhouse, two store rooms (or further cabins) and plenty of flat deck space – she was certainly a lot of boat for the £89,000 asking price.

Also, crucially, she had received the thumbs up from the owner of the central London mooring I intended to berth her at. To be in with a chance of rafting up among the other 25 or so Dutch barges, mine needed to be ‘traditional and workmanlike’. She also needed to be between 24m and 28m (78-92ft) to withstand the tidal flow athwart the stream of the Lower Pool of London – where the great 18th-century trading ships used to unload their cargoes. I had friends here, and I knew this mooring, with its floating gardens, community life and ideal location, was exactly where I wanted to be.

After a four-hour viewing with her owner, I called the broker that afternoon with an offer, which was accepted.

I had absolutely no doubt this step to becoming a shipowner was the right one.

AT HOME on a

DUTCH BARGE BOWCREST MARINE

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Buying Ilka was a stressful venture for Laura Ivill, but now she’s settled on a spectacular Thames mooring

Laura’s comfortably settled in with her stove for warmth.

Far left: Ilka at Exeter, where Laura first saw her

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LIVING ON A BARGE

“Everyone turned to me – either I walk away or I commit there and then to ‘accepting the ship’”

Left, Right: LAuRA iviLL; CentRe: stefAn fRitz

Above left: A second woodburner stove in the bedroom. Centre: Laura at the helm.

Right: The alarming state of the hull as revealed by the survey

Six weeks later, however, on a bitterly cold and blustery November day, the survey revealed bad news.

Ilka was up on the stocks in Mashfords’ Cremyll boatyard at Plymouth. My surveyor, Stefan Fritz, and I had only just met, but it didn’t take long to realise that if you need someone to help you buy a boat, then Stefan’s your man. He spent most of the rest of the day under Ilka’s great steel hull, making marks with his chalk, while we – the buyer, the sellers and the broker, Tony Charman of Bowcrest Marine – naturally retired to the pub next door for lunch and stories of life afloat. I’d gone through the previous survey report with the owners at the viewing, and everything seemed to be in order. We all expected the survey to be a necessary formality.

corrosion bombshell Then Stefan took me under the heavy black hull, by this time covered all over in white chalked numbers. Ilka’s hull was pitted with corrosion from end to end to such a degree that many spots were less than the 4mm thick she needed for insurance. Stefan suspected that the corrosion had happened many years before the previous purchase in 2004, while she was laid up, perhaps without any anodes. We all assembled back in the yard, glum faced in the cold, fading light.

The news was a bombshell to all concerned. Stefan’s view was that she needed not just patching, but a whole new bottom plate – a wrap of steel from bow to stern, costing tens of thousands of pounds. The broker confirmed that, according to the contract, I was entitled to walk away from the deal there and then with my 10 per cent deposit in my pocket. The owners, on the other hand, desperately keen to sell, now had a ship to get rid of whose value had just crashed through the floor.

A decision always has to be made on the day of the survey, which is why Tony was there in person. Everyone turned to me – either I walk away, or I commit there and

then to ‘accepting the ship’. If I carry on, then I am legally bound to seeing through the process. The yard would do the work, I would pay the same agreed price to the broker, he would pay the yard, then hand the balance over to the owner.

Stefan said he had more to do to complete the survey, and suggested he finish off in the morning; I was relieved to have the chance to sleep on it all. That evening I had to do a lot of serious thinking. Perhaps this was beyond me? Perhaps I, too, would be caught out like this in years to come? I was buying from a man who had served aboard Navy ships for 24 years and who had renovated boat after boat down the years; who had searched high and low for a barge such as Ilka, had sailed her across the English Channel from Germany, and who had spent the best part of five or more years converting her inch by inch into a home. If this financial bombshell could happen to a man with this experience and skill, then what on earth was I getting myself into? It was a troubled night, but by morning I had made up my mind.

Just over two months later, I became Ilka’s new owner. The yard had worked on her through the winter to give her a shiny new bottom, decently covered with £6,000 of top-grade epoxy paint that I bought for her.

the thames in springtime So how is living aboard on the Thames? I’d originally expected to arrive in November, but with the work it wasn’t until April that we were able to move. Still, it was no bad thing arriving in spring. Our walkways are made up of seven lighters held down by chain, and planted with trees, hedges, swathes of greenery and flowers bursting with colour at this time of year.

A gentle rocking comes and goes with the tide – and this is when all’s well with the world. At other times, with the Thames in full flood and the pleasure cruisers going past, even a big boat like Ilka is mercilessly CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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“I never tire of seeing the Thames rushing past outside” boomed from side to side. All in a row, like tethered horses, we strain at our warps as the wash tosses us up and down, one after the other in an arrhythmic dance, so that we snatch and cannon into each other. Down below the creaking ropes go into a frenzy of stretching and rubbing and banging, all Master and Commander on the high seas, until the wash subsides.

Spring is also the time when the Canada geese build their nests and hatch their young. The crane barge is a favourite spot, as it is for the ducks. The coots are particularly noisy, and many’s the time I have searched for one under a barge convinced its punchy squeaking means it’s got stuck. They aren’t very bright.

As spring moved into summer, I settled into boat life – the sunrise over Canary Wharf turned the skyscrapers into towers of gold and breakfast on deck was a pleasure. Neighbours grew tomatoes and courgettes, sunflowers and nasturtiums. On warm evenings, the party cruisers stream past – a summer soundtrack of rowdy cheering, disco lights and music that time forgot.

piMM’s and twinkling lights This is when we break out the Pimm’s, the chilled white wine and the vodka, get a bunch of people over for dinner and enjoy the twinkling lights of London, or settle down for the Sunday-night outdoor film screenings at the mooring’s own events venue.

But my first winter arrived with a bang, for which I was totally unprepared. At the slightest sign of frost, Ilka’s steel deck becomes a skating rink. The prolonged covering of snow and ice was, I confess, a formidable hazard. December, though, was a blast. Each boat in turn hosts a ‘lighting up party’ – an evening of fairy lights, mulled wine and mince pies, hot cider and brandy, thick soup, cheese platters and big tins of Celebrations – to which all your neighbours are invited. This is, of course, the best excuse to embrace the spirit of Christmas as much as you feasibly can; I got to know lots of new faces and was welcomed onto interesting boats large and small for a jolly good time and a good nose around.

But as joyous as the month was, it took a turn for the worse just after my own lighting up. Only a few days before Christmas, the boiler packed up. On the bright side, however, with no central heating I learned the art of making a cracking good fire in my burner and would fall

Mid-Channel alarm on the night watch When you’re waiting three months for a weather window – Force 4 or below – the weather had better be good. And on Friday, 9 April 2010, we had glorious sunshine and a calm sea at Plymouth. By mid afternoon we were under way for the 312nM journey along the English Channel and around North Foreland into the Thames, to Ilka’s new berth below Tower Bridge.

We divided the watches and at 3am I rose for my three-hour stint. I took the helm and chatted to Chris, the navigator, as I steered. With the huge bays along the Channel it was just a case of aiming for a series of lighthouses in the far distance. We had Selsey Bill on the nose for much of the way.

Ilka’s original 1955 Mercedes engine was going very nicely. However, skipper (and surveyor) Stefan likes to rig up his own fuel system, not knowing what the fuel tanks are like inside, so we had 1,000 litres of diesel in a plastic tank on the foredeck. It had just gone 5am when we closed on the headland and drew level with the lighthouse, its rocks now just a short distance away to port. Ilka’s engine started slowing, then gathering pace again – this hunting was alarming and at 05.10 we lost the engine completely. Silence. By then, Stefan and Shaun, the engineer, had joined us on deck to investigate. I fixed my gaze on the lighthouse and said nothing. We were uncomfortably close to the rocks, but luckily the air that night was fairly still and, if anything, we were slightly drifting east on our original course.

The pre-dawn light was as pink as a fairy cake, and a crescent moon rose over Ilka’s silent, drifting bulk. It turned out air had got into the rigged-up fuel system – not hard to rectify. At 05.50 Ilka’s engines burst back into life.

At 06.00 Ilka’s owner finished her watch and shot straight down to bed.

Above: Ilka on her delivery voyage, heading towards the White Cliffs of Dover in deteriorating conditions Left: The communallyminded mooring on the Thames 60

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asleep in the semi-darkness watching the flames licking the glass. I soon came round to thinking: “It’s a boat, it’s cold, get used to it.” I also came round to appreciating how much skill, effort, sheer hard work – and cash – converting a boat takes – and what has gone into Ilka.

And, yes, after almost three years now, I never tire of the pleasure of opening my front door to see the extraordinary, tumultuous Thames rushing past outside; I don’t just overlook the river; I’m on it, part of it, with its tides, its big sky, and the wide sweep of rough water always flowing in and out, and never twice the same.

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Onboard ACROSS EUROPE

CRUISING . SEAMANSHIP . EQUIPMENT

EUROPE BY DINGHY PART TWO

STAMBOUL TRAIL Budapest to Istanbul, big fish and land mines; Giacomo de Stefano’s dinghy odyssey continues, reports Steffan Meyric Hughes

Below: Entering the Iron Gates Gorge in Serbia Right: The Danube joins the Black Sea

above and left: anna sandrini

A

fter reaching Budapest at the end of 2011, trans-Europe dinghy sailor Giacomo de Stefano hibernated, first in his home town of Venice, then on his floating home, a 43ft (13.1m) Buchanan yacht off Mallorca. By May 2012, he was rolling again, this time on a train over the old rail bridge that connects Venice to the world (or “the world to Venice”, as he puts it), on his way to Budapest, to be reunited with his 19ft (5.8m) Ness Yawl Clodia, which had spent the winter under a heavy coat of snow and ice.

The trip so far (begun in London, see last month’s CB) had been a pleasant idyll of wild fruit, chance encounters, endless locks, and meetings with Government officials, river conservationists and others to complete his survey of the problems and opportunities facing Europe’s waterways.

This comfortable tour through the venerability of western Europe was about to cede to a wilder ride, as Giacomo passed through recent history, bullet holes, and the ghosts of Ceausescu and Miloševic as the Danube wound its way to the Black Sea. Things started off much as before – a balancing act between the “omnipresent plagues of plastic and rudeness” and the magic of wanting for little and bartering small favours for meals and beers, with the banks of the Danube as his mattress.

Throughout the trip, Giacomo had found himself part of a network of similarly penniless wanderers, wantonly deracinated souls like James Thomas (Scotland to New Zealand on foot, no money) and Stephan Meurisch (Munich to Tibet on foot, no money). What with James and the two-strong film crew of Anna and Leon joining the good ship Clodia, days were lively and night-times

filled with the warm bonhomie of adventure. All the while, Giacomo was waxing lyrical on his daily blog, about rowing: an intimate act with the river like “stroking the water”, the need to travel slowly: “If you visit the Louvre on a scooter, it’s likely you’ll miss something” and the manufactured needs of the modern age that are tearing the landscape apart.

LanD mInES, BuLLETS anD moBSTERS Entering Serbia from Hungary involved a protracted untangling of red tape and soon after that Giacomo found himself between Serbia and Croatia, facing the most awkward and least discussed predicament that faces voyagers in small craft. The Serbian side being impossible to land on, Giacomo moored up to Croatia, dug a hole behind a tree and lowered his trousers. Walking back to the boat, a sign bearing the words “Achtung – minen” made Giacomo’s blood run cold, and the walk back to Clodia was a very, very slow one. An estimated two million mines remain on Croatian soil, many of them lining the river, and every year people are killed and disfigured away from cities and well-trodden paths.

The legacies of the Yugoslav Wars of the early 90s, Europe’s worst fighting since World War II, would make their mark on much of the voyage along the Serbo-Croat border. In Serbia, AK-47s were deposited along with umbrellas and coats at the entrances to bars and restaurants, and through the many Serbian fishermen who put Giacomo up and fed him, he heard tales of death and genital mutilation perpetrated by ordinary Serbians, farmers and fishermen. In one backwater of the labyrinthine Danube, a man confessed to a grisly game of football played with the head of a dead Croat soldier.

“A sign saying ‘Achtung – minen’ made his blood run cold”

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ONBOARD ACROSS EUROPE

“The Wolves have come to learn that the water asks fewer questions than the land” “They are simple people who believed Milošovic’s provocative lies to create disorder,” Giacomo relates, finding the Serbians to be robust, honest and generous.

“I often stayed the night in their fisherman’s shelters and there would always be some money left on the table.

One of them later told me that this was a test of honesty, so mistrusting have they become since Milošovic.” He never asked the consequence of failing the test.

One Serbian, Batan, 51, joined Giacomo for a few days. Batan is one of a considerable number living on the banks of the Danube who call themselves ‘Danube Wolves’ living like hermits in the woods and living off the riches of the land and river. Batan’s kitchen is a stone fireplace set into a clearing on the water’s edge. Like many before them, the Wolves have come to learn that the water asks fewer questions than the land.

Soon after this, Giacomo made another hasty exit from arms after encountering a beautiful topless woman (“a siren”), a delightful hors d’oeuvre for the eyes shortly followed by the main course of a scowling face of her probably armed mobster husband. The Danube was widening out into a “sailor’s paradise, always windy” – 5km (3 miles) wide, clear and filled with fish and frogs.

Above, white-tailed eagles rode the thermals. Here, the Iron Gate’s hydroelectric dams 130km (80 miles) downstream spill the Danube into a 7 x 10km (4 x 6 miles). On the lake and later, through the famous Iron Gate gorge where cliffs rise up to 500m (1,640ft) on

either side, the local katabatic terror, the Koshava blows, and Giacomo waited a week in the peaceful village of Golubac before finding his weather window and sailing the gorge, then out through one of the two locks at the dam. Built to coral huge barges, these are 310m (1,000ft) long, 34m (111ft) wide and drop a total of 40m (130ft).

AboArd A leviAthAn After the Iron Gate, Romania lay on one side with Serbia still on the other. Giacomo was borne east on the 15,000 m3 (530,000cuft) per second flow of the great river towards Robsylv, as the colours and costume of Romania worked their way into his imagination.

At Robsylv, Giacomo, still with film crew Anna and Leon, were offered a 600km (360-mile) lift on the grain carrier Sterlet with Clodia in tow. At 67.6m (222ft) long and displacing 3,000 tonnes (two-thirds of that in cargo), Sterlet, Dutch-built of steel in 1957, is one of the leviathans of the Danube; captain Florian Constantin gave the travellers cabins for a three-day passage east.

According to Florian, the Koshava katabatic wind has claimed its victims. He told the story of a 3,000-tonne, 110m (361ft) barge that was lost nearby with all hands while making passage through a Danube thunderstorm.

For three days, Giacomo, guilty at the free ride, watched the banks slip by, enjoying the luxurious accommodation and view of the Danube, braided into channels and dotted with islands, and calculated the economy of river

anna sandrini (all four)

Clockwise from far left: Mirrorrigged near Golubac, Serbia, in high winds; a pelican on the Danube Delta; drying clothes after a near capsize in Romania; Danube Delta reeds

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ANNA SANDRINI (ALL THREE)

ONBOARD ACROSS EUROPE

transport: Sterlet uses 800 litres of diesel to transport 2,000 tonnes of cargo 600 kms. The 66 lorries required to make the same journey (albeit in one day rather than three), would use 13,000 litres – over 16 times as much.

The Danube was becoming increasingly wild and bucolic, its banks home to wild horses, wild boar, storks, herons, fish, horse-drawn carts and thatched houses. A near-sinking from a sharp gust filled the boat to the gunwales at one point – and Giacomo discovered the true purpose of having two masts – as anchor points for a washing line to dry his clothes.

The beauty of Romania’s countryside gave way to “the tattooed Romania” at Tulcea. “The people, the true flavours, colours, old roads, traditional music, horses, friendly stray dogs, Lipovan Russians and the LONDON Leaves April 2010 and again, after illness, in April 2011.

CrOSS ChANNeL May 2011.

Ramsgate to Gravelines, joins canals

ChAmpAgNe June 2011 Locks, tunnels and aqueducts on the canals

LOrrAINe July 2011 Locks and thunder storms on the canals

FrANkFUrT July 2011 On the River Main. The city is full of sailing boats

WÜrzBUrg August 2011 Reached after an upstream slog on the River Main

gypsy kids” gave way to loud music and the “dull, international people of the cities... This Romania is a hypertrophic world of manufactured needs. It looks too Italian, just as Italy looks too American.”

Away from the populated hubs, Giacomo found wonders unknown to travellers confined to land. The Romanian village of Sfântu Gheorghe, where the Danube Delta meets the Black Sea, was a place with streets of sand and access is only by boat. It was one of many places along his journey where Giacomo stopped for a few days to learn the place and its people.

Around this time Giacomo, alone again after the departure of the film crew, was awoken in the night as he slept on the peaceful patchwork of waters of the 5,000km2 (2,000M2) Danube Delta, Europe’s wildest. “The boat regeNSBUrg Sept 2011 The mighty Danube at last – and its oldest city

vIeNNA October 2011 Home is a cabin on a century-old steam tug

BUDApeST October 2011 Halfway mark. Home to Venice for winter

CrOATIA May 2012 Journey starts again in Hungary, then Croatia

BeLgrADe June 2012 A war-scarred capital city on a wilder Danube

gOLUBAC July 2012 Serbia, Danube widens into a lake

Above left: Big Country – rowing alone in the Romanian Danube Top: Fishermen’s floating homes near Belgrade, Serbia Above: Metal fishing boats near Smederevo, Serbia

rUSe August 2012 Danube forms the Romania -Bulgaria border

CONSTANzA August 2012 Out of the delta and into the Black Sea

ISTANBUL 28 Sept 2012 Mission complete

ROMANIA GERMANY LONDON

AUSTRIA

BLACK S E A

HUNGARY

CROAT IA

ENGLISH CHANNEL FRANCE

N

SERBIA

BULGARIA TURKEY

ISTANBUL

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

65

ONBOARD

koç museum

ACROSS EUROPE

NESS YAWL

Above: End of the road – arrival at the Koç Museum in Istanbul

LenGth oVeraLL

19ft 2in (5.8m)

Right: Big-scale plastic recycling in Drobeta-Tumu Severin, Romania

beam

5ft 3in (1.6m) dispLacement

275lb (125kg) anna sandrini

102sqft (9.5m2)

was being buffeted by some great power, pressure waves as though from the flicking tail of a monster. At first, I thought some sharks had come from the Black Sea [now just miles away] to pay me a visit.”

The unseen giants continued to investigate his little shell night after night, and further questioning among locals revealed the answer: they were giant beluga sturgeon which, though under threat, still exist in some numbers in the Danube. The prehistoric armoured fish, famous for its roe that sells, as caviar, for £4,000 a kilogram, grow up to 20ft (6.1m) long and weigh up to two and a half tonnes. By now, Giacomo was living off the water, eating edible floating lillies and drinking the Danube unfiltered.

IsTaNbUL aND THE bLack sEa Another chance encounter, this time with two Lithuanians aboard a classic Lyle Hess cutter led to a tow for Clodia and a lift for Giacomo for the first 108km (67 miles) of the Black Sea, a dangerous stretch for dinghies due to the short, steep waves. Then the two boats made their way along the Bulgarian coast, sometimes in convoy, 66

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

sometimes towing, and after a week and 550km (300nM), the straits of the Bosphorus were so near that Giacomo could smell the new continent of Asia as he slept at night.

On 23 September, he sailed under Galatea Bridge, entrance to the ancient harbour of Golden Horn, gateway for Phoenicians, Romans, Persians, Greeks and Vikings.

The tiny paraffin light atop Clodia’s mast was invisible in the mad, swaying, glittering blackness of the night sky and sea as Clodia rode over the wash of container ships towards the lights of the ancient city of Istanbul.

After 5,200km (3,100 miles) and two years, Giacomo had finally arrived. The ex-architect with three houses who sold everything to immerse himself in the waters of the world stepped off Clodia jubilant, a bearded nomad rich in experience and knowledge, testament to the common truism that says: “If you want something you’ve never had – you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.” Giacomo’s next project, a repeat journey on his 43ft (13.1m) Buchanan yacht, is in the making. www.manontheriver.com. Giacomo would like to thank the countless people who made his trip a possibility.

FUND THE FILM The Man on the River film is in production now.

It looks stunning (see the trailer at classicboat. co.uk by entering ‘Man on the River video’ into the search box and follow the link), but Giacomo needs to raise money for its production. You can help him by pre-ordering copies of the film or by making a larger donation.

iain ouGhtred

saiL area

ONBOARD

Atlantic sketch

An arts and crafts club DAn HOUSTOn recAllS mAking THingS AT SeA

my old green river knife has served me well, and i prefer it to the stainless captain currey knife someone dropped overboard in that winter gale, closing the coast at Fécamp. The late Dennis Ord, one-time captain of the tops’l schooner Vanessa Ann, and mate on the barque marques when she sank off Bermuda in 1984, would sleep while wearing his green river and i think it’s seamanlike to wear one aboard.

But the knife is now decades old, and the sheath, which also houses its steel/marlinspike, is cracking under the load of all that salt. We’ve been doing some leatherwork on the eilean (cB292) and so i ask captain Andy for an offcut to make a new sheath. i start on the aft deck at four bells in the afternoon – Ok that’s 2Pm, and measure the old sheath and begin cutting the luxurious 3mm-thick leather with the ship’s tools. i feel Ok about the leather because the ship’s actually using my sail needles, which i keep good and “would shiny in a little tin case. After a season in salty sleep conditions aboard, eilean’s needles look like little crackly lengths of rust! wearing his Second afternoon Andy pitches up making Green River monkey’s fist boom ties to tidy away ropes along the boom and soon we are joined by giovanni knife...” and then others. eye and back-splicing is explained and the different methods of making a sailmaker’s whipping are discussed as we play around with the small stuff.

Soon my basic-looking sheath is finished and i am quite pleased with it, especially since i have not done anything like this for years. Feeling encouraged, and given another offcut, i make a leather jacket cover for my notebook. Photographer Yoichi Yabe is so impressed me calls me sensei (teacher) and learns the method to make one for himself. it’s not all for play, at some points the cockpit overflows with bunts of sail, which are being re-sewn as the wear and tear of the Atlantic take their toll. But most afternoons see three or four of us, calmly busy, making things, by hand. We Dan sailed across the Atlantic call it the arts and crafts club, and after a on the Fife ketch Eilean. CB286 week at sea it becomes a tradition.

Old Thames deck coat Despite looking a bit “between the woods and the water” this retro Musto was designed around the old Thames Barge deck coat and has a tough wax finish and good quilted lining. Although it’s not as flexible as modern designs and a world away from brightly coloured foulies, when worn on the right boat, nobody will be sure from which century the photo was taken. www.musto.com £200

Handy Neoprene gloves Unlike many of the huge Arctic mits available these Nash Neoprene sailing gloves manage to retain your dexterity whilst keeping your hands toasty. They are comfortable, dry quickly and the shrinkproof synthetic leather palms give excellent grip and don’t slime up and stink. www.spinnakerchandlery.co.uk £21.95

68

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

ONBOARD

Lazarette GoPro Hero POV camera Some people – not GoPro themselves incidentally – have credited the GoPro Hero POV cameras with nothing less than revolutionising their sport. For kayakers, mountain bikers and practitioners of many other gravity sports certainly, the distinctive rectangular outline of the tiny super-wide-angle, full high-definition video, time-lapse and stills cameras are now a familiar sight. The revolution is that so many practitioners of extreme/gravity sports have now become amateur film-makers, broadcasting their achievements at the global 24-7 cinema known as YouTube. The Hero consistently wins group tests – most recently in November on Channel 5’s Gadget Show when one ascended to 120,000ft (36,576m) in a weather balloon, Red Bull Stratos style, continued operating at -40ºc then survived freefalling the 20-odd miles back to planet Earth without a parachute. The GoPro Hero 2 (“twice as powerful” as the original Hero) has now been superseded by the Hero 3 and, guess what?

“Twice as powerful” again.

The Hero 2 is capable of amazing video, with a 170-degree field of view at 1080p HD (30 frames per second). It can also shoot in 48, 60 and 120fps modes for smooth slow motion with an acceptable reduction in quality. The time-lapse

mode takes a photo every half-second or more to capture, typically, rising and setting suns. The tough casing means the camera can survive reasonable knocks and is waterproof to 200ft (61m). The camera even has a 3.5mm minijack mic input. Part of its appeal is the ability to mount it anywhere: it’s traditionally been used as a ‘point-of-view’ camera, mounted on handlebars, dashboards, helmets, wrists, chest harnesses and, via sucker mounts, to anything else.

VISITg Sailin ent Equipm

BATTERY LIFE

It has a couple of drawbacks: though simple to use, the spring-loaded buttons on the casing require a really strong press and with the camera slow to react, you .uk are sometimes unsure if you’ve started. Flashing red boat.coe c i s s a l c record lights help with this. Another drawback is that y mor For man reviews without the optional LCD back (£70 extra), you can’t product see where you are shooting as there’s no viewfinder.

However, with a field of view of 170 degrees this matters little in practice. Battery life is about 2h 30 min, and spare batteries are available at £20. Storage is to ordinary SD cards – up to 32GB is supported, and with the low cost of high-speed SD cards online, storage is virtually infinite.

With a wide range of spares and accessories, the best price for the 2 as we went to press was £156 for the ‘Surf’ edition, which, with its bundled mounting accessories, is probably the best option for sailors. www.gopro.com where all, including accessories, is explained.

SUNDOWNERS

WITH GUY VENABLES

Kentucky’s old-fashioned

Adze

The swiftness with which you can remove wood with an adze makes using them a satisfying pleasure and, when sharp and in the right hands, they can be remarkably accurate. When the handle is bent right, like this one, the blade is designed to hit the wood at the perfect arc of the swing. It’s evident that Old Tools, at Bexhill-onSea, which specialises in used gear, sells them quickly, so for more examples have a look around their website.

Adzes like this are around £30.

If, like me, your choice of drink is affected as much by your budget as your palate then may I introduce an old friend and medal winning Kentucky Bourbon, Clarke’s. Rich and oaky it fits perfectly into my favourite winter cocktail, the Old Fashioned.

To make it: three ice cubes in a tumbler and a dash of Angostura, stir well and add a splash of bourbon and two more ice cubes, stir well and add sugar syrup (don’t buy it, just melt some sugar in water and let it cool) add more ice, stir and repeat the whole process several times until it’s big enough. If there’s a lady on board add a slice of orange peel. The whole process should take around five minutes. (If you ever get short shrift from a busy cocktail waiter ask for a few of these as revenge.)

As well as being excellent it also uses just three ingredients, making it great for boats, as Angostura is tiny and sugar is probably already on board. Ice you may have to borrow.

Credit where it’s due: Clarke’s won a silver medal at the International Wine and Spirit Competition. Rich in unusually dainty oak flavours, with a remarkable price tag.

Clarke’s Old Kentucky Straight Sour Mash Bourbon £11.46 at Aldi.

www.oldtools.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1424 217893 CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

69

COVEY ISLAND BOATWORKS custom yachts

902.640.3064

for the world

since 1979

www.coveyisland.com

Tim Wright

Come visit us at the Maine Boatbuilders Show!

Discover more at www.tnielsen.co.uk +44 (0)1452 301117 Winter sun shines on the boats at our yard in Gloucester 70

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

ONBOARD

Classnotes Windfall yachts

WINDFALL CLASSES The Windfall yachts fell into six categories: very large 125-300 Square Metre yachts; 100 Square Metre yachts (55ft/16.8m LOA, 25 tons); 50 Square Metre yachts (42ft/12.8m, 10 tons); 30 Square Metre yachts (32ft/9.7m, 7 tons); miscellaneous yachts of similar size to the 100SqM and 50SqM, although built pre-1930, and small dinghies that included the O-Jolle, International 12-Square Metre Sharpie and the International Star.

BY VANESSA BIRD

Y

THE NAME

KATHY MANSFEILD

ou could argue that the Windfall yachts are not a class. The boats – of which there are more than 100 – are by different designers and builders, of varying sizes and designs, and suitable for different purposes, yet they all have one thing in common – they were all part of the post-war reparation agreement.

The Windfall yachts were a fleet of German government-owned sailing craft which were seized by the occupying forces in the southern Baltic in 1945, and subsequently divided up among the Allies. The majority ended up in British hands, but other countries in the Commonwealth, as well as Russia and the USA, were also recipients.

The majority of the boats were relatively new. Regulations enforced in Germany in 1919 following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles had restricted the number of warships being built, but in 1935 the constraints were loosened and shipbuilding became big business.

Large numbers of crew to man the ships were therefore required, and Admiral Raeder of the Kriegsmarine saw training on yachts as the best way to teach seamanship. Thus in the late 1930s Germany experienced a boom in building boats for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe.

Many were built to the Square Metre rule, which had proved so popular in Scandinavia earlier in the century. The German versions, however, were more suited to cruising than pure racing in an attempt to standardise designs and keep maintenance costs low. Three classes dominated – the 100SqM, the 50SqM and the 30SqM – although a number of bigger and smaller boats,

up to 300SqM and down to 12sqM, were also built. They were built by two main yards – Abeking & Rasmussen on the River Weser and Burmester at Bremen – both known for their high quality workmanship.

Following the war the Royal Navy took over a significant number of these boats, and the majority remained in British hands. Mid-1945 saw the formation of the British Kiel YC and then the British Baltic Sailing Association; it was through these that many of the troops still based in Germany learnt to sail, and an active racing programme was launched.

Many Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe yachts were also sailed back to the UK as part of Operations Homeward and Sallyport in 1946.

Most were then dispersed among the services, including around 10 of the 100SqM yachts, 40 of the 50SqMs and 20 30SqMs. The introduction of the Windfall yachts had far-reaching consequences in the UK, as previously there had been few British services-owned yachts. The advantages of sail training and the ready supply of decent boats on which to conduct it, however, helped kickstart a new era in services sailing, and one that continues today. Nearly all Windfall yachts have since gone into private ownership, but they introduced a huge number of people into sailing, and left a powerful legacy behind.

Above: The 50SqM Sea Scamp is still sailing, owned by a large syndicate

The name ‘Windfall’ originated in the report of a delivery trip by Cdr IG Aylen of the Royal Navy which referred to the yachts as being a “windfall to the nation, [one] which cannot be repeated”.

STILL SAILING You can still experience sailing a Windfall yacht. Following their ‘demob’ from services sail training, Sea Scamp (50SqM) and Overlord, (100SqM), were acquired by syndicates which provide their members with reasonably-priced sailing opportunities. www.windfallyachts.com

WINDFALL YACHTS (50SQM) LOA

40ft (12.2m) LWL

29ft 1in (8.9m) BEAM

8ft 9in (2.7m) DRAUGHT

5ft 10in (1.8m) DISPLACEMENT

7.5tons

SAIL AREA

538sqft (50m2) BUILDERS

Abeking & Rasmussen/ Burmester

Vanessa’s book Classic Classes is out now: www.classicboat.co.uk CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

71

READER OFFER

Easter Weekend Solent and Poole Adventure

Hamburg to Oostende Balder Centennial+1

Belfast to Galway -Ireland onboard Thalassa

Price from £395 per person onboard Annabel J

Price from £495 per person onboard De Gallant

Price from £1232 per person onboard Thalassa

29 March - 1 April 2013 Get a taste of sailing this beautiful Pilot Cutter in the relative shelter of the Solent and South Coast. Explore the quaint harbours of the Isle of Wight and the sheltered anchorages.

12 May - 22 May 2013 100 YEARS & 100 MILES . On 12 May 1912, logger Balder was built in the city of Vlaardingen. The herring boat is one of the hundreds of ships which were built over the past centuries in Vlaardingen. For this anniversary in 2012, Lord Vlaardinger Coerd with the foundation Halen & Bringing organised a challenging cruise from Vlaardingen to the English port of Great Yarmouth in England.

On 12 May 2013, Gaff Schooner De Gallant will leave the port of Hamburg for a non-stop 100 miles trip to the east coast to celebrate Balder Centennial+1.

A voyage on the Gallant is always an adventure. During your trip you will help with sailing the ship as much as you feel comfortable, with or without any previous experience. Hoisting the sails, coiling the ropes, taking a turn behind the steering wheel, or navigating or just sitting on deck in the sunshine or watching the sun set, is as much a part of the Gallante experience.

The price includes all meals taken on board, tea and coffee, bedding and all berthing and mooring fees.

14 July - 28 July 2013 Beginning in Belfast on the East Coast, you will be sailing along the Giant’s Causeway, around the northern tip to Derry (Londonderry), the West Coast, visiting Donegal, Clare Island and finally to Galway. You will visit some of the most picturesque bays and lively villages in Ireland, pay a visit to Scotland’s Isle of Islay and of course, visit some of the most famous whisky distilleries.

This is your chance to get to know the local people, explore the countryside, hike along the amazing cliffs overlooking Ireland’s spectacular coastline, do some sea kayaking and some energetic pub crawling combined with Irish music and dance! You can just laze about on the sun deck or try helping the crew to hoist the sails, steer the ship and, for the ‘brave at heart’, climb the 35m mast to the look-out!

The price includes all meals taken on board, tea and coffee, bedding and all berthing and mooring fees. Not included are alcoholic beverages (whisky, wine and beer), which can be purchased on board from the bar.

The main aim of these voyages is to provide a relaxing, enjoyable and exciting short break on one of the most luxurious and beautiful classic yachts on the South Coast. These voyage is very suitable for novices due to the sheltered waters, but also due to the strong tides and shallow banks, remain a challenge to the seasoned sailor. During the 3 day voyage we will take you as far as Poole or Weymouth, weather permitting. For those with previous sailing experience and the desire to learn to be a Mate on Annabel J, we take volunteer crew and offer 1/2 price berths. Contact us for details.

The price includes all meals taken on board, tea and coffee, hire of good quality foul weather gear and all berthing and mooring fees.

Optional items include: Bus transfer to the bush mills Distilleries and Giant Causeway (one trip), the trip to ‘Carntogher History Trail’; Conair Staire Charn Tóchair’. ca. € 40 per trip. City walk Londonderry: ca. € 5; Visit Bushmills Distillery: ca. € 7; Kayak clinic: ca. € 50; Organized tour of bird watching at Ratlin’s Island: ca. € 20; 1/2 day kayaking Donegal: € 40

To book email: book@sailingdreams.co.uk or call 07500 664 146 or visit sailingdreams.co.uk

Astins Sailing Trophies

Prices are per person and subject to availability. Prices are correct at the time of publishing. The precise sailing route is subject to prevailing local weather conditions and the captain’s decision is final and non-negotiable including changing or cancelling all or part of the route. You must have appropriate and sufficient insurance for each trip. Flights are not included and you have to arrange your own travel to the starting port and back. Full terms and conditions available on our website.

• Unique designs, courtesy of our in house design team.

• Shipping worldwide • Engraving services available • Commissions undertaken Contact us to discuss your requirements Tel: +44(0)1503 240863 • Email: richard@richardvasey.co.uk or visit www.astins.co.uk Sculpture site- www.richardvasey.co.uk Designed by sailors, designed for winners 72

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Getting afloat

ONBOARD

From London Boat Show

There’s a white one and a white one... from left: Cornish Crabber Adventure 12, 19 and 26; also available, 17 and 26

ADVENTURE RANGE

Crabbers add bermudan option Thirty-five years after Roger Dongray penned his design for the 19ft (5.8m) GRP gaff cabin yacht the Cornish Shrimper, the line has been expanded to include bermudan-rigged yachts, with the white-hulled, white-sailed Adventure range unveiled at the London Boat Show this January. The 12, 17 and 19 were on the stand; the range also includes the 22 and 26.

They are based on the same hulls as the GRP originals, which have a reputation for good, solid build. The

Adventure boats swap wooden spars and gaff rigs for aluminium poles and a modern bermudan sloop rig with plenty of roach in the main. All bar the 26 have the option of a spinnaker.

The range lacks the tan-sailed aesthetic pleasure of the gaffers, which of course continue, but provides the bermudan advantages of simplicity and weatherliness. Sales director Peter Thomas told CB that they were conceived in response to demand from existing and prospective customers.

Adventure 12 LOA 12ft 3in (3.8m), beam 4ft 9in (1.5m), disp 264lb (120kg), from £7,075 inc VAT Adventure 17 LOA 17ft (5.2m), beam 6ft 9in (2.1m), disp 1,310lb (595kg), from £18,850 inc VAT Adventure 19 LOA 19ft 3in (5.9m), beam 7ft 2in (2.2m), disp 2,040lb (925kg), from £23,750 inc VAT Adventure 22 LOA 22ft (6.7m), beam 8ft 3in (2.5m), disp 4,300lb (1,950kg), from £55,950 inc VAT Adventure 26 LOA 26ft 3in (8m), beam 9ft 1in (2.76m), disp 8,600lb (3,900kg), from £95,950 inc VAT

Tel: +44 (0)1208 862666, www.cornishcrabbers.co.uk

ANGLIA YACHT BROKERAGE DINGHY

International back home More than once, we’ve asked why the delightful little International 12-Foot dinghy, designed by Briton George Cockshott, featured in the 1920 and 1928 Olympics and now in its centenary year, is hugely popular in Holland, Japan, Italy and elsewhere but not in its country of origin. Well, more and more builders are building the 12-Foot now. Anglia Yacht Brokerage had a nice example on its stand at the London Boat Show. She’s 12ft (3.6m) long as the name suggests, clinker on oak, in larch (as shown, £8,500 inc VAT) or mahogany (£9,750), and pretty as a picture. Apparently, they are great to sail too – we’ve not yet had the privilege.

Tel: +44 (0)1359 271747, www.anglia-yacht.co.uk

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

73

Specialist Tools & Supplies for Traditional Boats

UK Stockist Le Tonkinois Varnish & Coelan Red Lead Putty, Red Lead Paint Oakum Caulking Cotton

It’s not Unusual (if you ask Classic Marine) 2013 catalogue now available

20L Drums Jotun Seaguardian Antifoul in green and other colours – £175 equivalent £8.75 per litre Easy to follow website:

www.tradboats.com Call for details 31 Ravensmere, Beccles, Suffolk NR34 9DX Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1502 712311 • John@tradboats.com

www.ClassicMarine.co.uk • 01394 380390 International Boatbuilding Training College

Sauntress

Practical training on a wide range of projects, new build, restoration & repair, courses from a day to a year, C & G 2463-03, ELCAS Tel 01502 569663

www.ibtc.co.uk Visitors welcome 74

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

ONBOARD

Charlotte watters

Adrian Morgan The other day in Seahorse magazine I came across a confession by one Rod Davis, one of the world’s top professional sailors and coaches, well known to America’s Cup fans and contracted at the moment to the New Zealand team. You didn’t need to read between the lines to gather that life at the very sharpest of sharp ends, hanging on to a foiling 72ft (22m) catamaran, humming with pent-up tension, is nerve-wrecking. So what does he look forward to?

Well, he’s bought himself an OK dinghy.

One of my best friends I met grinding the genoa winch of a 60ft (18.2m) Volvo Race yacht.

Between grunts he told me of his love for the little wooden Harrison Butler lying on the hard at the Elephant Boatyard.

We even had a photo of him in sponsored jacket, doctored with the logo “My other boat’s a Butler” – which upset the designer’s daughter Joan Jardine Brown.

“My father was Doctor Harrison Butler, not just Butler.”

As we all know, speed is relative. You soon get used to 40mph in a car. AC72s are now foiling at 40 knots, and it suddenly seems normal, aside from the nerveshattering shrieks from tortured carbon. And yet, is it not the same for us in our little wooden classics, at a tenth of the speed? The creaking of the planks, the anxious looks aloft? Are we so very much removed from the dry-suited, helmeted guys on the weather deck of Emirates New Zealand, flashing by at 40 knots, fire hosed from the leeward float? Do we not have much in common; the differences purely down to speed, and is not speed, after all, relative? When Sally surfs to a mind-boggling 7 knots, is it any different to the sudden transition from displacement to foiling on an AC72? Or from sub- to supersonic?

I remember recreating a working narrowboat journey along the Grand Union, travelling at night. It was a dark but splendidly starry night and after an hour at the tiller I felt enveloped in the universe, and the narrowboat was a spaceship. Our 4 knots could have been 4,000, and when a brightly lit line of railway carriages flashed across a distant bridge, it might have been a comet. Speed, and classic boats, they’re both relative.

Up to speed with speed Adrian reflects on the virtues of life in the slow lane

W

ithin 10 years of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight, biplanes were dog-fighting above the Western Front, and within a few more decades propellers had been superseded by jet fans.

Progress of late has been similarly rapid on water.

While we in the classic boat world potter about at around 5 knots, off the Namibian coast a foiling proa just smashed the 70mph barrier, a full 10 knots faster than anything before (a kite surfer).

Why do we persist in sticking with our slow, old, low-tech boats? It takes Sally, our 5-tonner, about nine hours to cross from Ullapool to Stornoway. It would take Vestas Sailrocket less than an hour, although the Minch would probably smash her to pieces long before.

There are times when we long for something a little faster, capable of shrinking the Minch to four hours, or the time it takes the CalMac ferry. Something like a Mini Transat, with a canting keel and water ballast.

How long does one have to wait before yesterday’s racing boat becomes a classic? One day when all the wooden boats have rotted beyond restoration, or lie in museums, will our classic sailing take place in carbon fibre and honeycomb, and articles in Classic Boat wax nostalgic about the old days of glassfibre?

Personally I doubt it. There will always be wood, and people to fashion wood into boats for people happy to potter along at 5 knots, rather than 50.

“We doctored his Volvo Race jacket with ‘my other boat’s a (Harrison) Butler’”

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

75

BOATS FOR SALE

Boats for sale Looking to sell your boat?

Reach over 50,000 readers each month

To advertise call Edward Mannering +44 (0) 20 7349 3747 Edward.Mannering@chelseamagazines.com Copy Deadline for next issue is 22/02/2013

RestoRation PRoject 1894 William Fife 17/19 day boat.

Contact James Gerard at jgerard@hotmail.co.uk

A TrAdiTionAl GrAceful 16’ Wooden Skiff

Built 1996. Very carefully maintained and protected. Cover. Trailer. ÂŁ5,750. Tel: 020 7727 5227

ERARD WILLIAM FIFE BFS.indd 1

Maurice Griffiths 25/01/2013 tidewater

Built 1959 by Seacraft, Essex. 32’6� x 9’6� x 3’5�

Long keel / bilge plates.

Beautiful condition.

Extensively re-fitted 2008. New covers, forestay, pro-furl reefing and instruments 2012.

Ashore Emsworth.

GBP 26,500 Further details http://tinyurl.com/ bsem3h7 Tel. 07525 100 824

11:53

ROMILLY - 22ft

Nigel Irons design built 2000. Mariner 4hp outboard 4 stroke with bronze self-tailing winches. Sails and running gear in good condition. Combi road and launch trailer, full cockpit camping tent, fully fitted cockpit and cabin cushions. Ashore in Dorset.

Price ÂŁ23,000.

Please tel: 01722 415215 or email: charles.joly@ncmorris.co.uk

1.,&*-2 )2 0110- + 2'0-*!,2,+)2 (2 #*$/2 2 1*//) 1+/ 01-(2 .#!#-(2 ) )2*,2 )2 %/012/ +2". +1 10 /-2 .,'2 .''*/*+,-2 %+12 -.%0/ 2 .-2 01%0&/2 .,' -/#1' 2.-2.2 0--0$2&.,2 0)2 ( 2 2 ( 2 2 ( 2 2 ( ) 01/ *,!2 $.&02 $0,- #1!(2 +1/ 01,2 01"., )2

+12%#1/ 012*,%+1"./*+,2 $0.-02&+,/.&/ 2 "*-/1.$ !" )'0

LASSIETTE 10.2m 1947 RobERT CLARk dESIgn Built by James Miller, Fife. Mahogany on steamed oak frames.

Comes with full history from build to present owner. Lying Dumbarton, Scotland. ÂŁ4,000.

Contact: 07784929311 or email Hamish.beaton1@gmail.com

MCA Code 2

‘Josefine’ is 66’ overall (50’ OD) a first class Small Ship suitable for commercial charter or private use, an extremely sea-worthy well maintained Gaff-rigged Ketch, built in 1931, 40 tonnes, Oak on Oak, re-built 2002, sleeps 9, all original ship’s papers from 1931, Ford 140HP. Mooring available at ÂŁ2k pa, lying Plymouth UK. ÂŁ129,000.

Tel: 07971 376 172, Email: sailjosefine@gmail.com

Nereus (origiNal Name maria ii)

‘NELLIE’ SU71

1862 Dan Hatcher Itchen Ferry 22ft. Rare opportunity to own piece of maritime history. Immaculately restored over 10 years View history and particulars at www.itchenferry.org ÂŁ17,500. Tel. 07766 256700.

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

S&S, design nÂş1358 of 1958.

Built in 1964 in Astilleros Ferrer, Palma de Mallorca 14.7m x 3.78m x 2.10m. Wood (exterior hull was epoxied in 2006) Last extensive renovation was 7 months during the winter of 2010-2011 (repairs, new standing rigging, varnish, ...)

Most electronics from 2011 (DSC VHF, chart plotter, broadband radar, AIS transponder, Navtex, EPIRB, auto pilot). Very good condition Lying: Oostende, Belgium Euro: 159,000 (VAT exempt) www.nereus.org or email m.deceuninck@e-y-n.com

BOATS FOR SALE SWAN DANCER

A Classic Gentleman’s Sailing Ketch. She was designed by Frederick Parker and is the last wooden Boat, built in 1970, to Lloyds 100A1 by AH Moody & Son. The traditional and graceful lines of her hull constructed of iroko on oak, are amply complimented by her magnificent teak interior. She provides exceptionally luxurious accommodation for any discerning owner who may wish to travel in safety, style and comfort. This beautiful yacht is fully equipped with modern navigation and short hand sailing aids. Price £126,000. Contact owner on 07801385788

Maria P Maria P. was built in 1969 in Perama, Greece by the Zacharias shipyard. Originally a heavy-duty fishing boat she was refitted and rigged as a schooner in 2000 by a team of shipwrights using traditional methods and tools. LOA 19 metres, beam 5.7, draft 2.5, displacement 52 tonnes, Baudoin 400 hp engine, generator, water maker, hydraulic windlasses and 3 capstans, bow thruster, autopilot, full navigational electronics, 5 metres 90 hp RIB. Accomodation for 5+2 crew in three cabins + unusually large saloon sitting 10. Professional galley, fridge and large freezer, three toilets. Maltese flag, VAT paid.

Price: £160,000 Full technical details on request: luigi@luigibarzini.com

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

Rosira. W. Macfurson-Campbell 30ft centre cockpit teak sloop.

Started 1939, completed 2004. Remarkable history. £32,000.

Tel: 01904 448651 or email: rb@thorneengineers.co.uk or visit www.thorneengineers.co.uk for full story and pictures.

YACHT CHARTER AVAILABLE

DiamonD A recreation of a Charles Sibbick 1897 fin-and-bulb keel ‘skimming dish’ Half Rater. Compete in classic regattas with this new unique hand built boat. 21 foot long, built in strip plank with yellow cedar deck, mahogany coamings and bronze fittings. £28,000

34 foot 1966 Holman Ketch moored on the Beaulieu river is available for charter Summer 2013. Comprehensively re-fitted in 2011, she has hot water, fridge, electric windlass, Taylors stove, Baby Blake toilet, mains power sockets, shower and full set of navigation instruments.

Experience of handling a long keel boat essential.

11 foot dory with outboard engine included.

Please contact the owner on 07764 198124 or email thestrongarms@ymail.com

For more information about Diamond contact: Martin Nott, 07831 328212, martinnott@mac.com www.martinnott.com

Looking to sell your boat?

Reach over 50,000 readers each month

There are two styles of Boats for Sales ad to choose from and with our special Spring offer, if you buy two months, your third month will be free. Pick the style which suits your requirements and email: Edward.Mannering@chelseamagazines.com with your text and image or call +44 (0) 20 7349 3747. The deadline for the next issue is 22/02/2013 SAMPLE STYLE A GoLAnT GAffEr

No. 8. Excellent 2 berth coastal cruiser, built 1999. Length 18’ 9” Beam 7’ Draft 2’ 9” long keel, designed by Roger Dongray. Yanmar GM 10 regularly serviced. Very attractive boat lovingly maintained, Lying Fowey. £12,000 ono.

Email: name@classicboat.co.uk 0000 11111111

SAMPLE STYLE B

STYLE B. 5cm x 1 colums. Either 55 words or 30 words plus colour photograph. £155 inc VAT and Internet

cuTTEr

Built 1991, mahogany & epoxy hull similar to GRP, 1930’s spars & fittings, beautifully maintained. Visit www.idclark.force9.co.uk for photos and specification. £25,750 Contact 00000 111111

STYLE A. 5cm x 2 columns. Either 160 words or 80 words plus colour photograph. £275 inc VAT and Internet

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

77

BROKERAGE

Brokerage

To advertise Call Patricia Hubbard +44 (0) 207 349 3748 Patricia.hubbard@chelseamagazines.com Copy Deadline for next issue is 22/02/2013

33 High Street, Poole BH15 1AB, England. Tel: + 44 (0)1202 330077

68 ft Charles E Nicholson Cutter 1937 As FIREBIRD X This yacht was a design inspired by the 12M R class but liveable enough for offshore races and fast cruising. John Leather observed “OISEAU DE FEU is, among middle size yachts, the most convenient and elegant boat a sailor could dream of”. She won many inshore and offshore classic races in her early post war life. In 1989 a two year full restoration was to bring her back to her original splendour. Since then, she has taken part in the Mediterranean classic races, with great results - a yacht on which you can win races and enjoy wonderful cruises in some luxury. €750,000 Euros Lying France

72 ft Albert Luke Yawl 1928 Designed by AR Luke as GLADORIS II she was built at the Luke Brothers yard on the Hamble. A very beautiful vintage yacht MOON FLEET has enough modern updates to make her extremely easy to manage as a large family classic yacht or with a minimal crew. Keenly priced she is an interesting option.

45 ft Bristol Pilot Cutter 2007 A recreation of the pilot cutter PEGGY, built in 1904 by Rowles of Pill, POLLY AGATHA has all the charm of a classic Edwardian cutter but with a luxurious modern interior and equipped with modern technology. Her ample deck space and accommodation fit her for a variety of roles including charter and sea school use but her finish and detail befits that of a vintage yacht – and places her a long way from her work boat roots. She has 10 berths including a luxuriously appointed master cabin. £395,000 VAT unpaid Lying UK

50 ft Charles Livingston Gaff Cutter 1898 MOLITA - now MARIGAN was designed as a fast cruiser and her undoubted appeal inspired her current owner to rescue her. Every aspect is impressive - his aim to sail the Classic Circuit with family and friends on a boat without weakness in her structure, which includes a solid teak deck. She is therefore no delicate 100 year old museum piece but a true vintage yacht to be sailed as hard as originally intended. A gaff rig with top sail will always inspire but MARIGAN has an almost natural quality about her as she sails. She is fast, strong and very beautiful! €375,000 Euros Lying Spain

45 ft William Fife III 8 Metre 1914 Designed by William Fife III and built by the Fife yard in 1914 IERNE could be the ultimate First Rule 8 M. Her rig is close to the 1914 original and an early example of a large Bermudan. Regardless of the International Rule and its complexity, there is a purity to this boat both in the treatment of her rebuild and her breathtakingly good looks. Since the completion of her restoration, she has been mainly in storage - and is a truly exciting prospect.

54 ft McGruer Ketch 1973 TALISKER MHOR was designed by James’s son George, a graduate in naval architecture who ran the business from 1969. From this time it seems McGruer’s hallmark yachts were of another aesthetic dimension, reflecting George’s own artistic qualities. Indeed more than one commentator has remarked that three ketches of that era TALISKER MHOR - as she now is, CUILAUN OF KINSALE and GLORY BE IV are among the finest yachts of their size – anywhere. A superb cruising yacht she has moreover been set up carefully with the aim of sailing shorthanded; her owners sailing à deux with considerable ease – her condition is impressive. £275,000 Lying UK

45 ft Sparkman & Stephens Sloop 1970 Built in Trieste in 1970 by Astilleros Mariano Craglietto - It was a different era when a yacht this beautiful raced round the World in the first Whitbread Race – GUIA finished 5th ! S&S seemed able to blend the CCA and the then blossoming IOR Rules into capable and fast boats with good looks as a by product. Testament to her fine pedigree, GUIA is a wonderful family cruising boat and races successfully on the Mediterranean Classic Circuit.

42 ft Sparkman & Stephens Yawl 1957 FAIRWYN was built by McGruer & Co with no expense spared under the close supervision of Rod Stephens himself. She is essentially a larger version of FINISTERRE three-time winner of the Newport – Bermuda Race. FAIRWYN’s 50 years could be considered a game of two halves; as a successful racer, fondly remembered by many former crews and then as a comfortable, safe and versatile cruiser; ever displaying the style and qualities for which her designer and builder are so highly regarded. £125,000 Lying Italy

€600,000 Euros

€225,000 Euros

email: info@sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk 78

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Lying Spain

Lying Spain

62 ft Nicholas Potter N Class Sloop 1938 Designed by Californian Nicholas Potter - AKA the Herreshoff of the West, SERENADE was built for the famous violinist Jascha Heifetz and commissioned for the 1938 Trans Pacific Yacht Race. Her rare canoe stern and well proportioned low lying deckhouse contribute to her beauty. She is moreover powerful and fast. Around 2000 she was substantially rebuilt by William Cannell Boatbuilding in Maine. Sensitively restored including new systems and engine SERENADE is easily as memorable as her name would imply. $695,000 USD Lying USA

£310,000

Lying UK

www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk

BROKERAGE

HERITAGE MARINE www.heritage-marine.com

M.J.LEWIS & SON (Boat Sales) LTD DOWNS ROAD BOATYARD, MALDON, ESSEX. CM9 5HG

Tel: 01621 840982 / 859373 • Mob: 07885 859373

Website: www.mjlewisboatsales.com • E-Mail: info@mjlewisboatsales.com

12m Mystery Class, No:1, 1936 Robert Clark completely restored.

Teak decks. Accomplished racer, Yanmar eng. Suffolk £60,000

10m Albert Strange Gaff Yawl, 1922 Much restored, new spars rig & sails.

20hp Beta eng. Very elegant lines.

Accom for 2. Essex £48,000

12m Weatherhead Gaff Ketch, ex MFV, 1963 Total conversion, no expense spared. Gardner eng. J. Lawrence Sails, Collars spars.

Scotland £47,500

33ft Bruce Robert’s “Spray”, 1987 Steel hull. New fit out, Mooring paid May’13. To be Sold complete ready for The Caribbean. Ibiza £39,950

12m Bawley Gaff Cutter, 1922 A complete restoration, 2003.

Yanmar eng. Good hdrm. Pitch pine.

Essex £26,500

10.6m Prawner, 1900.

Crossfield’s of Arnside. Gaff cutter, Restored. Inboard eng.

Essex £25,500

8.75m Laurent Giles Sloop, 1965 Mashford’s built. Restored 2005 to “As new”. Comprehensive inventory.

Yanmar 20hp. Brittany £22,000

35ft Teak Gaff Yawl, 1900 Restored back to her original rig.

Centreboard. 7hp Volvo.

Pembrokeshire £22,500

12.8m Lifeboat Watson 42, 1962.

Coded for 12. Crew accom.

Original condition & inventory.

Twin Gardner 4LW’s. Orkney £16,000

6.4m Hillyard 4tonner, Gaff Cutter, 1937 Teak on oak, Well found, comprehensive inventory. Very pretty. Yanmar eng.

Long keel. Kent £9,750

14m Colin Archer, Gaff Ketch 1966 Heavily built pine. Well kept. Classic Regattas.

Beta marine eng. Accom for 6.

Brittany, France £75,000

6m Landau 20 mkII, 2004 GRP Cathedral hull, walkaround model, 60hp Mariner o/b. As New condition.

Modern Classic tender. Essex £17,950

TSRigging Limited

Heritage-Sailing.com

Traditional Riggers & Outfitters of both Classic and Modern vessels.

E: info@tsrigging.co.uk

Charter or Sail Training , this unique little Brigantine gives a taste of Traditional sailing with modern luxuries. Details of her and our other vessels. E: info@heritage-sailing.com CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

79

BROKERAGE

Anglia Yacht Brokerage New 12’ Dinghy available with either larch or Mahogany planking. Class celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2013.

Prices from £8,500 Inc VAT

1994 Winkle Brig 16’ Dayboat in good condition with an Easy-launch road trailer, virtually new Parsun 4HP 4-stoke outboard, camping tent. £4,350

Tel. +44 (0)1359 27 17 47

New 18’ Deben Lugger day/ camping dayboat.

Prices from £13,500 Inc VAT

2002 Drascombe Coaster Mk2 built by McNulty Boats to a high specification and in good order. Complete with Tohatsu 6HP 2-stroke outboard, Easy-launch road trailer, custom cover. £11,950

New 10’ GRP clinker lug sail dinghy.

Prices from £2,950 Inc VAT.

1980 Cornish Shrimper Mk1 continually updated over the last 15 years. A very nice example of an early Shrimper.

She has recently had new sails, trailer rebuild, antifoul strip and recoat, new stainless fittings. £10,950

www.anglia-yacht.co.uk Email. sales@anglia-yacht.co.uk

“The World of ClassicYachts” 2 Southford Road, Dartmouth, South Devon TQ6 9QS Tel/Fax: (01803) 833899 – info@woodenships.co.uk – www.woodenships.co.uk

50’ Arthur Robb motor sailer. Built in UK 1959. Major refits 1969 and 1979. All hardwoods construction, teak deck. Big ketch rig. 50hp Lister diesel. 6 berths in all teak interior.

Performance of the average sailing yacht, more sea-kindly than a motor yacht and all the home comforts.

Exceptional value at £65,000 UK.

43’ All teak Bermudian cutter. Built in France 1936. In superb condition after UK refits now with new mast, rig, sails, floors, engine, deck, system and much more. Yanmar diesel. 6 berths in original panelled interior. Radar, plotter, auto-pilot etc. An absolute show-stopper. £98,000 UK

45’ Historic schooner. Built in Denmark in 1894, sold to present owners by Wooden Ships 25 years ago and refitted in S France, now regularly racing on the Med circuit. 48hp Bukh, 4.8Kv genset. 5 berths. UK owners.

S France. £95,000.

42’ 20TM Hillyard ketch. Built 1966. Mahogany hull, sheathed deck, varnished mahogany superstructure. Bermudian ketch rig on varnished masts. Parsons 56hp diesel. Centre cock-pit model with aft cabin. 6 berths. One of the larger Hillyards, huge volume, tidy, a very good buy at this price. £34,000 UK

57’ G.L. Watson Motor Yacht. Built by Camper and Nicholsons in 1960. Teak hull and deck, aluminium superstructure. Very economical twin 5cyl Gardners. 7 berths in 4 cabins. A bombproof expedition type yacht, built to the highest standard and able to take its crew anywhere in style.

Malta £175,000

34’ Van de Stadt 34, 1992, Cold moulded hardwood hull, varnished mahogany topsides. Fin keel and skeg hung rudder. New Volvo engine 2008, new rigging 2007. 6 berths in 2 cabins.

Virtually new boat in superb condition with a rich inventory, ready to sail away.

Executor sale so priced accordingly at £37,500 UK

30’ +bowsprit Macmillan Yachts (now Spirit Yachts) 1991. Gaff cutter. Immensley strong cold moulded hull, teak deck. Wonderful deep cock-pit, huge cabin volume with 5 berths. 2nd only ownership, regularly updated, almost as new condition.

Scotland £45,500

25’ Harrison Butler Bermudian cutter. Built Portsmouth 1934. 2012 refit. Pitch-pine hull, lead keel, teak deck and coach-roof. Varnished mast sets 355sq’ sail. Volvo 17hp diesel. 4 berths. A smart little cutter after a 2012 refit.

Devon £12,500

35’ Holman Rummer Yawl built 1960. Teak and mahogany planking on oak. Bottom end rebuild ’06. Large volume boat for her size with design features ahead of her time, fast comfortable and easily handled she is an ideal cruising yacht with a good race history.

Must sell so sensibly priced at £18,500

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

BROKERAGE

C

M

Y

Hero - stole the show at Goodwood Revial last year, and Powerboat of the Year finalist in Classic Boat’s own 2013 awards, Hero is simply magnificent. Dating from 1898 and fully restored in 2012, she offers silent electric boating for eight passengers in comfort and luxury - £105,000

Lady Genevieve - an elegant 40ft Beaver Stern Launch from the roaring twenties.

With a well documented history that includes carrying Princesses Maragret and Elizabeth, she has been well maintained and is in excellent condition - £119,000

Carician - the last traditional Bates Starcraft of teak, with many improvements and refurbishments, she is 40ft of beauty. Equally at home at sea or on the river, she is well travelled and sleeps four with seperate heads. For sale with full winter cover and having recently been repainted and revarnished - £89,500

Skippa - a 43ft Broads cruiser with a folding wheelhouse to facilitate passing low bridges. With new galley, heads and a replanked hull and the benefit of large fuel, water and holding tanks, she sleeps seven comfortably and runs on a single diesel engine - £35,000

Blue Moon - 25ft Andrews slipper, once the flagship boat on the Andrews stand at the London Boat Show, she retains her original name from 1952 and can be seen in the film ‘Hope and Glory’. For sale with a complete inventory and having been repainted for 2013, she is a fine example of the elegant Andrews brand - £25,000

Zenique - 39ft Rampart, beautiful inside and with a glowing 2012 surveyor’s report, quoting an ‘exceptionally good hull’ Zenique sleeps six comfortably £POA

Mesrine - a versatile and stylish British designed and built 18ft Cove Launch, at home on the river or around the coastline. Our demonstrator is for sale with a 14hp inboard engine, but other options are available - please contact us for details - £32,500

Pebbles 4.2 - lightweight, zippy and beautifully varnised German built boat.

Many options available, our price with trailer, cover and outboard - £18,500

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

For more information on these, or any of our other boats: call 01491 578870 mobile 07813 917730 email sales@hscboats.co.uk www.hscboats.co.uk

For model boats, dockside clothing and boaty curios visit www.boatique.co.uk

www.TallShipsforSale.co.uk

26m 85ft (on deck) Modern Gaff Schooner, built Borneo 2004/06.

25m (82ft) Steel Twin Screw Gentleman’s Schooner part-finished restoration project.

www.ClassicYachtsforSale.com

14m (46ft) Modern Classic Sloop built Italy, 2003.

Yanmar 300hp diesel, two genset, aircon. 12 guests + 6 crew. Great luxury expedition yacht.

Currently chartering.

USD $1,200,000 – Based Thailand

Hull and decks restored, Twin Gardner diesels. Drop Dead Gorgeous! 2010 Survey please ask for a copy. £260,000 - Offers invited Location - Dorset UK

Construction is cold moulded, double diagonal over strip plank Cedar, all epoxy / glass sheathed. 6 berths. Yanmar 40hp diesel. A real stunner!

Euro €198,000 – Lying Costa del Sol, Spain

10m (33ft) Fairey Marine Swordsman, fast cruiser.

12.6m, Buchanan 41, built Burma Teak on Canadian Rock Elm to Lloyds 100A1 in 1964.

8m Kattegat 26, 1997, designed by John Leather/Jim Spencer.

Up to six berths, two heads, excellent galley, Twin Volvo Penta TAMPD41P-A 200bhp diesels installed 2000.

Superbly maintained. 2010 Survey- Please ask!. £59,500 Offers Invited!

Location River Colne, Essex

Up to eight berths in two cabins, Perkins 4.107 diesel. All almost original! Now needs some refurb’ and a new Owner. 2012 Survey available, please ask £44,950 Location - near Belfast NI.

Colin Archer style Gaff Cutter. 4 berths, Yanmar 18hp Diesel, Windpilot Pacific Self Steering. £ TBA Location - Faro, Portugal

11.5m (38ft) Modern Classic Yawl, hull by Spirit Yachts, 2000.

6 berths in three cabins, Lister 30hp diesel, absolutely beautiful! Survey available Please ask for a copy. £145,000 – Location - Chichester Harbour UK

10m Nicholson 32, built Halmatic/Burnes Shipyard in 1969.

Classic long-legged Craft. 4 berths, Perkins 30hp diesel, Monitor Windvane self-steering. £19,850 Location - Essex

www.EasternYachts.com See Website for Photos, Specifications & Surveys 19 Colne Road, Brightlingsea, Essex, CO7 0DL • Tel: +44 (0) 1206 305996. Planning to sell: Please call Adrian Espin for details.

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

81

Craftsmanship Yard News

compiled by steffan meyric Hughes: +44 (0)20 7349 3758 steffan@classicboat.co.uk

SWEDEN

New deck for Sweden’s fastest

c/o a votre saInte

olle neckman

one of the best known of all yachts from sparkman & stephens, design 1104 refanut, one of those classic inboard yawls at 62ft 10in (19.2m), was given a new lease of life this summer at the Båtsnickeri boatyard in the swedish capital of stockholm, writes olle neckman. this was fitting enough, as it was in sweden – at the neglinge yard – that she was built in 1955, with the magnificent design brief to be “the fastest yacht in sweden”.

Her recent work included a complete re-decking, to an swept-ish pattern but with no king plank – the hallmark of the yard where she was originally built. the taper is done so that the planks amidships are parallel with the centreline. this month’s centenarian (p14) was also built at the neglinge Yard.

FRANCE

PHIl JoHnson

Small boat therapy

CAMBRIDGESHIRE

New Riva restorer Tom Neale, 29, in the cockpit of a Riva Ariston he restored.

Cambridgeshire-based Tom is a new name in Riva restoration.

The Ariston is smaller than the famous Aquarama with more models sold (more than 1,000 in fact) between 1950 and 1974.

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

a group of French therapists has addressed the ills of our fast-moving, increasingly isolated lives with a new initiative to provide solace by building wooden boats, writes roger Barnes. À votre santé, as they are known, has chosen the meaban, a Francois vivier design (above), as the boat to build, and the first one is in build now. she is only 22ft 4in (6.8m) long but has four berths, as well as a handy gaff sloop rig, a lifting centreboard and a pretty, seakindly hull. she is being built by participants young and old in order to help bridge the generation gulf, another problem identified by the association. she has been named le Petit Prince after the story by antoine de saint-exupery.

Uroxsys becomes Awlwood Uroxsys, the NZ-made polyurethane wood finish, has been brought under the Awlgrip brand, part of the AkzoNobel organisation. A new range of products, to be called Awlwood MA (for marine aliphatic), and incorporating Uroxsys technology, will be launched globally this year. Uroxsys, similar to Coelan, has always scored well in our varnish test.

See page 86 in this issue.

CRAFTSMANSHIP

gERMANY

World’s largest Jollenkreuzer – and Nobel’s yacht Boatbuilder elmar Specht (above) recently started a restoration project on the biggest single-masted jollenkreuzer ever built. hilanwer is a 50sqm class, 36ft (11m) long and 10ft (3m) in beam, built by drews yard in hamburg in 1936 to a design by Wilhelm von hacht. She’s iroko on oak with steel frames and floors. Jollenkreuzers, light, beamy centerboarders, are not well-known in Britain, but in germany they were (and are) popular boats on the lakes and rivers. even albert einstein had one and sailed her bravely and enthusiastically (CB210). the job will include replacing all steel ribs and the centerboard trunk – including the centerboard itself, which is 8ft (2.4m) long.

7-m yaCht Svea also in elmar’s yard, Wischhafen, is the 7-m yacht Svea, above right, built in Finland in 1914 for another luminary – alfred nobel (CB291). Work on her is scheduled for this year too. the yard is also busy with a rescue project. having saved an old ewer (elbe sailing barge) from scrap last year, elmar and his team are now trying to rescue one of the oldest working Bristol Channel pilot Cutters, glenear, built c1880 and now lying half planked in a shed near a museum scheduled for demolition in February. the plan is to repratriate her for restoration.

NY, USA

wASHINgTON

an electric boat dating from 1899 was recently restored at hall’s Boatworks in Lake george, new york, reports dag pike.

Wenoa is a 32ft (9.8m) elco launch originally delivered to the Fr Smith yard on Lake george where she was used to demonstrate the capabilities of electric boats. elco, the electric Launch Company, was based in Bayonne, new Jersey, and started building electric launches for the 1894 World’s fair in Chicago. Subsequently the yard built a range of motor cruisers, then switched to military production during World War two and went on to build nuclear submarines. today elco is still building electric propulsion systems for motor and sailing boats.

Wenoa’s restoration was a long, slow project with much of the hull having to be renewed. the original electric motor and its controller have been fully restored by elco experts, but the original edison batteries have been replaced many times. in her day Wenoa could voyage the length of Lake george and back, 68 miles, on one charge with a maximum speed of 12 knots. now she can do so again.

A new design from the Stephens waring office is for a 24ft (7.3m) spirit-oftradition trailable half-decker. The ‘Signature Twenty Four’, will be built by students at the Northwestern School of wooden Boatbuilding, washington State this summer, in strip plank.

Another yacht, still at the drawing board stage (though commissioned thus far), is for a 144ft (44m) SoT ketch. Hull material is as yet unspecified.

C/O SOuthamptOn yaCht ServiCeS

Oldest electric boat restored

SOUTHAMPTON

75ft C&N yacht ready for spring we reported work on the 75ft C&N yacht Yali in last month’s Yard News – but without a pic. So here she is at Southampton Yacht Services, looking great and due for a spring finish, when she’ll sail back to her home on the Italian coast.

dag pike

Stephens Waring new boats

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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CRAFTSMANSHIP

MAINE BOATBUILDERS SHOW, PORTLAND, MAINE, 15-17 MARCH

Maine event for boatbuilders

BY STEFFAN MEYrIC HUGHES This year’s Maine Boatbuilders Show looks, again, enviably focused on the business of traditional craft. The show, held on a historic site that was once a hub of manufacturing for the railroads in the 19th century and for steel as late as 1978, is a place for sailors to meet boatbuilders. As well as the boats – which include such heartland classics as Downeast skiffs, catboats, beamy centreboarders, canoes and kayaks – there is a range of ancillary exhibitors to cater for just about everything else. There are 96 exhibitors in total – here are a few that serve as a good example of what’s on offer at the show.

Tel: +1 207 774 1067 www.portlandcompany.com/boatShow

Above and right: Adirondack Guideboat, classic 15ft ‘rowed canoe’ Below: One of many ‘Downeast’-style launches at the show – this one is the Banks Cove 22 from Pemaquid Marine, in GRP

EXHIBITORS Adirondack Guideboat Classic 15ft Adirondack ‘rowed canoe’ in strip plank (pictured) and two new boats: 12ft decked sailing canoe and composite 17ft tandem rowed guideboat Airhead Caught our eye – a marine loo that sounds great on paper. No through-hull fittings and no installation, bar an above-decks vent outlet Allied Boat Works 19ft Downeast skiff, up to 90hp Arey’s Pond Boat Yard GRP catboats, open and cabin, 12-29ft, New 14ft racing catboat at the show

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Grey Barn Boatworks Fast launches in wood and GRP – New North Shore 25 GRP launch at show Hewes & Company Plywood clinker skiffs John Williams Boat Company GRP bass boats with lots of wooden trim Norseboat 12ft , 17ft and 21ft trailer-sailers Pemaquid Marine Banks Cove 22 launch – Downeast boat (pictured)

Artisan Boatworks Classic keelboats in modern wood.

Showing Herreshoff’s Buzzard’s Bay 18, nominated in our CB Awards (CB295)

Portland Yacht Services Boat in build at show, paint shop, winch-cleaning demos and more

Cape Cod Shipbuilding Classic sailing boats in GRP. Herreshoff 12 ½ at the show

Pulsifer Hampton 22ft strip-planked inboard-engined workboat – 100+ built in last 40 years

Cranberry Island Boatyard NEW centre-console Downeast launch, 19ft, GRP

Rumery’s Boat Yard 38ft torpedo-sterned rumrunner in GRP and Herreshoff Alerion 26 (GRP)

Eastern Boats 25ft and 35ft classic GRP work-style launches

SeaWay Boats 18ft and 24ft traditional launches

Fatty Knees Boat Company Lyle Hess tender in GRP

84

General Marine Custom-built Downeast boats

Traditional Boat Plank-on-frame yachts – which they build, repair andrestore

CRAFTSMANSHIP

STORMY PETREL

ABOvE AND RIGHT: EMILy HARRIS

50 years of owning a smack Owning and maintaining a yacht for 50 years is an incredible achievement.

Dick Norris (right, and above, if you can spot him next to his wife) recently celebrated it with this party in the Medway Cruising Club. Retired teacher Dick, now 77, has owned the 40ft (12.2m) engineless Whitstable oyster smack Stormy Petrel, built in 1890 (CB278, and our website), for 50 years, keeping her on a swinging mooring on the Medway in Kent. “When you take a boat like this away from here it’s like an alien thing, people don’t understand it any more,” he told us. Guests included David Patience (boatbuilder), Tony Winter (owner of pilot cutter Cornubia), Jim Lawrence (retired sailmaker), Doug Scurry (ex-owner of smack Joseph T), Richard Titchener (smack Sallie), sailmaker Steve Hall, Robert and Pearl Simper, Peter Dodds (Thames Barge Mirosa) and many more.

AUSTRALIA

Scruffie’s do-it-all 19-footer Scruffie Marine in Queensland, Australia has never paid too much attention to the rule book. We discovered this while test-sailing their 20ft (6.5m) Secret 20 planing gaffer in 2010 (CB262). If there’s one thing this eclectic range has in common, apart from the eggbox ply construction for amateur builders, it’s use of space: even the smallest, the Shimmy 12, has a broad enough sole to sleep two.

So here’s the latest boat – Scruffie’s entry into the ‘do-it-all-19footer’ category that is so hot these days. She’s called the Sienna Ex (for expedition) and according to Mr Scruffie (Derek Ellard, English émigré to Australia), she’s offshore capable, self-righting, selfdraining, can take a crew of seven, and seat six around a dining table amidships. She was developed with Duke of Edinburgh’s Award leaders and Australian Navy Cadets, two bodies who already use Scruffie boats and, unusually, is suitable for use with disabled crew.

Her rig is an unusual lug yawl, with a loose-footed, brailing main and an optional square sail for running before the wind. She’s 19ft (5.8m) long, 600kg in weight, built in GRP, and number one is already in service taking DoE students on five-day voyages of discovery in Queensland. UK price was not set as we went to press.

Tel +44 (0)1223 832 928 whisperboats.co.uk /+61 7 5545 1015 scruffie.com

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

85

seRies 3

Wood finishes third update

Richard Hare reports back after another year under the sun and snow

S Above: Henwood and Dean’s finely varnished Polly 86

Michael english

ummer 2012 – ha! – was a record-breaking washout. There was precious little UV so in fairness to all those products that we’ve tested previously, those up on the rig last summer had a pretty cushy time of it.

All of the nine proprietary wood finishes that entered this series in spring 2009 were accredited a CB Pass, and the objective of the subsequent year has been to see which of them moved on to gain 2- or 3-Star ratings, and possibly more.

teak. Each test piece has sharp corners, such as should never be used on a boat’s exterior. All woodfinishes struggle with these; our use of them accelerates ageing – and indicates how a product might cope with the seasonal wood movement that occurs at, say, mitre joints. Thus a product that ‘fails’ for this reason at, say, 3½ years would not be expected to do so on a properly rounded ¼in (6mm) radius corner, or larger. Indeed, we frequently keep such products up on the rig as they usually yield more useful and encouraging information.

TesT criTeria

The series 3 producTs

Briefly to recap, and for the benefit of new readers: for a woodfinish to become a CB ‘Pass’ product (1-Star) it needs to withstand 18 months’ exposure without the integrity of the finish rupturing or eroding. A 1-Star Pass places it comfortably within the usual 12-month maintenance cycle but with a useful measure of leeway.

Additional Stars are credited for each subsequent year that the product performs well.

The rig faces southwest onto a Suffolk estuary and the back of each test piece is coated with flexible PU to ensure its watertightness. Iroko is used as its oiliness is known to make it tricky, a characteristic it shares with

Series 3 includes three traditional/conventional varnishes, a dedicated marine exterior woodstain as well as two that were bought from a builders’ merchant, one of which is a recently launched high solids product. Also included are a 2-pack and one flexible polyurethane (this is Uroxsys, the New Zealand-made marine aliphatic, now taken over by AkzoNobel brand Awlgrip to be relaunched globally as Awlwood MA later this year).

‘Ongoing remedial work’ recommendations are based on exposure in a northern European climate. In opposite extremes, like the high salinity, high UV eastern Med, remedial work will need to be much more frequent.

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

CRAFTSMANSHIP

1 2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Nine product comparison table PRODUCT

DESCRIPTION

COATS (1)

COVERAGE (2)

COST/LITRE COST m2 (3) (4)

DAYS TO APPLY

RESULTS 42 MONTHS

5

16

18.20

5.68

5 5

*** * ** ** ***

SINGLE-POT CONVENTIONAL VARNISH

1 Jotun Penguin Ravilakk 2 Seajet uv 3 Nauteco Coma Berenice

Alkyd-based with Chinese wood oil, synthetic amber and ‘other materials’ Phenolic alkyd base with tung oil and ‘traditional ingredients’ Alkyd-based

5

12

18.37

7.65

5*

10

28.96

14.48 (8.68) 5

Hard polyurethane + catalyst

4

16

35.68

8.92

1

Topcoat aliphatic flexible PU Used with Uroxsys primer

5 1

12 15

30 18

13.70 (5)

2

3 3

16 16

25.20 17.50

4.73 3.28

3 3

1 2 3

13.5 13.5 13.5

12.04 16.71 16.71

3.37 (6) 3.71

3

TWO-PACK VARNISH

4 Seajet Polyurethane Gloss FLEXIBLE POLYURETHANE

5 Uroxsys/Awlwood MA† †

rebranding later this year

EXTERIOR WOODSTAIN STANDARD (50%) SOLIDS

6 Sikkens Cetol Marine/International Woodskin** 7 Sikkens Cetol Filter 7 EXTERIOR WOODSTAIN HIGH (75%) SOLIDS

8 Sadolin Ultra with base coat 9 Sadolin Ultra

Base coat Ultra Ultra only

3

PASS (distinction) PASS PASS

PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS

(4) Based on the number of coats given in column 1.

(5) Based on £12.50 (aliphatic) and £1.20 (primer).

(6) Based on £0.89 (base coat) and £2.48 (Ultra).

(7) Based on £6.66 (epoxy) and £6.56 (2-pack).

(*) Manufacturers suggest 3 to 4 coats; this would bring down the cost per m2 to as low as £8.68.

1 JOTUN PENGUIN RAVILAKK

3 NAUTECO

5 UROXSYS FLEXIBLE PU

*** PASS

2 SEAJET UV VARNISH

*

PASS Distinction

App Five coats, the first thinned about 30% with white spirit, the second given a light de-nibbing with 400-grade paper. The five-coat application spanned five days.

42 months A small fissure along the top edge has not degraded significantly over the past 12 months. Otherwise intact and retaining a decent level of gloss, hence its 1-Star ‘distinction’.

Ongoing remedial work: As with Ravilakk, it would benefit from being top coated at an 18-month/2-year interval.

** PASS

App Five coats, the first thinned about 30% with white spirit, the second given a light de-nibbing with 400-grade paper. The five-coat application spanned five days.

42 months Totally intact on surface but there is significant detachment on the upper end-grain. It retains a high gloss but has a slight dimpled orange-peel surface, though without the crazing found on some conventional varnishes in earlier series.

Ongoing remedial work: It would benefit from being top coated at an 18-month/2year interval.

4 SEAJET POLYURETHANE

** PASS

App The 6-coat system spanned two days.

Since no evaporation is involved this application will have a significantly higher build than solvent or water-based finishes. Coats were applied at 20-minute intervals, wet on wet.

42 months Totally intact on surface and all four edges although a small fissure has opened on the side corner most exposed to UV. It retains a very high gloss.

Ongoing remedial work: It would benefit from being top coated at an 18-month/2year interval.

PASS

*** ** ** ** ***

Table notes (1) Primer(s) included where applicable.

(2) Claimed m2/lt on a single coat basis.

(3) Cost per litre (£), 2009.

App Five coats, the first thinned about 30% with white spirit, the second given a light de-nibbing with 400-grade paper. The five-coat application spanned five days.

42 months Totally intact on surface and all four edges. It has lost its gloss – except on the sides that have not felt the full brunt of the UV – and the surface is matt.

Ongoing remedial work The film has remained intact but to retain the high level of gloss it maintained up to the 18 month assessment we recommend that a fresh top coat be applied soon afterwards.

PASS

(**) Sikkens Cetol Marine is now (from 2011) rebranded as International Woodskin; Filter 7 is unchanged

***

App Primer applied in warm conditions and allowed to cure overnight. Five coats of Marine Aliphatic (top coat) applied at 2-hour intervals, de-nibbing third coat.

Six-coat application takes one to two days.

42 months Totally intact on surface and all four edges. It retains a very high gloss and a light nutty tint.

PASS

Later this year, this technology is to be relaunched worldwide by Awlgrip as Awlwood MA

6 INTERNATIONAL WOODSKIN FORMERLY SIKKENS CETOL MARINE

*** PASS

App Three coats, the second de-nibbed lightly in preparation for the third. The three-coat system spanned three days.

42 months Totally intact on surface and all four edges. It retains an impressive level of sheen, equivalent to that on the two Sadolin samples and it does not seem to have degraded significantly, if at all. It’s not comparable to the gloss retained on the Nauteco and Seajet varnishes but now surpasses the sheen on the Ravilakk. It has more ‘life’ and sheen than Filter 7, the builder’s merchant product (see overleaf).

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

87

CRAFTSMANSHIP WOOD FINISHES

7 SikkenS cetol filter 7

** PASS

8 Sadolin ultra two-tin

app Three coats, the second de-nibbed lightly in preparation for the third coat.

The 3-coat system spanned three days.

42 months Totally intact on surface but a hairline fissure has opened along the top corner and along one side corner. It retains a lower level of sheen than Cetol Marine (aka International Woodskin, previous page). Nonetheless, it remains a worthwhile budget alternative to the more expensive product. Its aesthetic level of finish will be acceptable on traditional workboats where a high gloss finish isn’t particularly appropriate, although there are now better alternatives when it comes to aesthetics.

** PASS

distinction

9 Sadolin ultra Single-tin

app Three coats: one base, two top. Second coat de-nibbed lightly. It took three days.

42 months Totally intact on all surfaces but early signs of wood exposure along one corner and down one side. Inclusion of the base coat means a lower build than test piece 9, and a failure at this stage isn’t particularly surprising. It retains a high level of sheen, though now no longer superior to the Cetol Marine. Translucence is very good too. It had the best level of sheen/low gloss that we’ve yet to come across for an exterior woodstain to date and its use could extend beyond workboats and into the realm of graceful luxury yachts. A worthwhile budget alternative.

*** PASS

app Three coats (Ultra topcoat only), the second de-nibbed lightly. Three-coat system spanned three days.

42 months Totally intact on all surfaces. It has outperformed the 2-tin version. It retains a high level of sheen, fractionally superior to both of the 50% solids products. Its translucence is very good too.

This 1-tin Ultra system is an even more cost effective budget alternative than the 2-tin system. It equals its 2-tin counterpart in having the best level of sheen/low gloss we’ve yet to come across for an exterior woodstain. Again, its good translucence means that its marine market potential is also assured for workboats and yachts.

table 2 cB ‘Pass’ products and their star rating this isn’t a list of all the candidates; only ‘Pass’ products are listed: Product Stars (*) test ongoing? conventional varniSheS Prima varnish epifanes varnish Skippers Starwind uv varnish hempel (Blakes) classic varnish + ( ) le tonkinois organic varnish ( ) Jotun ravilakk to date Yes (Series 3) Seajet uv ( ) nauteco coma Berenice to date Yes (Series 3)

** ** ** *** * ** * ** ** **

two-tin varniSh uv-tech two-tin varnish

very low

*

exterior woodStain Sikkens novatech exterior woodstain Sikkens cetol Marine (international woodskin) Sikkens filter 7 Sadolin ultra (two-pot) Sadolin ultra (single-pot)

****to date *** ** toto date ** todatedate ***

two-Pack (catalYSed) varniSh Skippers Poliglass/acriglass two-pack varnish Seajet Polyurethane gloss

Above: Coelan on teak – MY Gralian on the French Riviera high

**

water-BaSed woodSealer Burgess hydrosol water-based woodsealer

cost, applied (by type) z low

* *to date **

very low Yes (Series 3) Yes (Series 3) Yes (Series 3) Yes (Series 3)

Moderately low

( )

Yes (series 3)

flexiBle PolYurethane very high coelan flexible polyurethane ( ) uroxsys / awlwood Ma++ to date Yes (Series 3) notes: + hempel (formerly Blakes) classic varnish (right) has been upgraded with a distinction star to reflect its particularly high gloss and craze-free quality even after the corners had ruptured. It also nearly made it to 4-Stars ++ uroxsys has been taken over by AkzoNobel’s Awlgrip division, and its technology is the basis of a new product, awlwood Ma, due for launch later this year. *the Star rating: The Star rating works as follows. All star-rated products are also CB ‘Pass’ products.

Excess of 18 months’ exposure on the test rig Excess of 30 months Excess of 42 months Excess of 54 months ( ) Distinction – narrowly missed the next star (z): Based on price, coverage rate and number of coats required.

For more information on these products, see the relevant launch features in CB189, March 2004 (Series 1), CB238, April 2008 (Series 2) and CB263, May 2010 (Series 3)

**** * ***

*

88

****

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

*

**

***

SERIES 1

9½ years update

When we commenced Series 1 back in 2003 we never dreamed we’d still be reporting on it nine years later.

In 2008 we announced our joint winners from this series, the high solids exterior woodstain Sikkens Novatech and the flexible polyurethane, Coelan. They both achieved the highest result to date and notched up 4-Star ratings.

Coelan had the edge on Novatech as it retained a good level of gloss and translucency, and it still does!

For this it was awarded a distinction star.

These two mighty warhorses refuse to go away and show no sign of giving up the ghost. Battlescarred – they failed along their sharp edges four years ago – but beyond that they carry on undaunted, the defects at those sharp upper corners having not spread much further.

But with its 3-Star rating ongoing, Uroxsys (soon to be rebranded as Awlwood MA) is snapping at the heels of Coelan. Meanwhile among the woodstains Cetol Marine and Sadolin Ultra are proving more than a match for Novatech. Arguably, you could say that they have already superseded Novatech as they have retained a vastly improved sheen and translucence.

Ultra’s aesthetics – and possibly in time Woodskin’s too, the verdict is still out – are so much better than Novatech’s – maybe it has already served its purpose.

When the results of all three series are combined we find we have a growing bank of CB ‘Pass’ products, so here they are all together (Table 2, left).

Mist ral

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320ft of teak cap rail in harsh South Pacific sun.

No covers... no maintenance.

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Coming Soon, Awlwood MA. The New Exterior Timber Clear Coat System From Awlgrip Incorporating Uroxsys Marine Aliphatic Advanced Technology CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

89

CRAFTSMANSHIP

Boatbuilder’s Notes

all photoS: Robin GateS

EXPERT ADVIcE

Staying sharp

BY ROBIN GATES When sawing or planing to the line the first requirement is an accurate line and for this it helps to use a well-sharpened pencil. A traditional method for sharpening is to wedge a drawknife under one arm, cutting edge uppermost, and draw the pencil downwards across the blade with your free hand.

Besides being convenient this produces a flat-sided knife-edge which is remarkably fine yet less likely to break than the conical point produced by a conventional pencil sharpener or the fragile lead of a mechanical pencil. Here, for example, the pencil is marking inside a knifed line that is around 0.25mm across so the tip of the lead must be 0.2mm or less yet it doesn’t break

Above left: Sharpening a pencil with a drawknife Above right: A knife-edged pencil drawing a line on English oak

because it is a fraction over 1mm wide – that is from the side visible here to the opposite side.

The extra width arising from sharpening this way gives the lead strength in the plane where needed, parallel to the line, as it is dragged across the timber.

Doing this will also reveal if your drawknife is sharp – if it won’t sharpen a pencil it needs honing.

clAuD woRTh on fITTIng ouT

Cb aRChiVe

Dress your wire

90

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

In his classic 1934 book Yacht Cruising, Claud Worth reminds us of something very easily overlooked in the fitting out of a yacht at the summer’s start: “Every winter all galvanised wire rigging should be given a dressing of hot boiled linseed oil. It is little trouble, and it more than doubles the life of the wire.

When fitting out, do not forget to go over all wire rigging with a cloth and fresh water. It may have picked up dust or grime which would soil white sails.”

“Every winter all galvanised wire rigging should be given a dressing of hot boiled linseed oil”

CRAFTSMANSHIP

Traditional Tool ROBIN GATES

Stanley double-ender bi-plane If you like Colin Archers and canoe yawls you may also like the Stanley 130 block plane because it, too, is a double-ender. With its compact body and low angle cutter the standard block plane has long been a boatbuilder’s favourite for fine finishing and smoothing end grain but it would be even handier if it reached into tight corners. Around 130 years ago Stanley lengthened a standard block plane to 8in (20cm) thereby making space to seat a bullnose cutter in the heel and such a plane was born – the surprisingly versatile double-ended 130. For little increase in weight it handles all the general purpose smoothing of a regular block plane and, in the close quarters of a yacht’s cabinetry, sneaks almost to the foot of a perpendicular with the bullnose.

In some respects the hybrid 130 surpasses the stand-alone tools it replaced. The longer sole provides better registration when flattening a surface, just as a long chisel is better for paring, and it allows finer control when working into a tight corner. In both situations the extra weight gives

a tad more momentum in tackling awkward grain without juddering.

Meanwhile, when shooting an edge with the plane on its side the long, square-topped casting maintains the sole solidly parallel to the surface.

With its knurled wheel and screw mechanism the 130’s blade adjustment is rudimentary, lacking both depth control and a lateral lever, not to mention an adjustable mouth, but very fine adjustment is achieved through lightly tapping the top and sides of the blade with a hammer.

“Anyone accustomed to working by eye and touch will soon be making shavings as thin as Bible paper”

Anyone accustomed to working by eye and touch will soon be making shavings as thin as Bible paper.

Stanley made the 130 until the 1950s and it proved popular enough in Britain that both Marples and Record copied it. The Record 130 was still in production in the 1980s.

The only significant weak spot is the bullnose casting which may be cracked if the plane has been dropped. Should a new cutter be required the spare for a Stanley 9½ block plane is a perfect fit.

Above: The bullnose taking fine shavings off English oak Right: Shooting an edge with the plane on its side.

Note the two mouths

ROBIN GATES

BY ROBIN GATES

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

91

MARINE DIRECTORY

Marine Directory

To advertise Call Patricia Hubbard +44 (0) 207 349 3748 Patricia.hubbard@chelseamagazines.com Copy Deadline for next issue is 22/02/2013

BOATBUILDERS

BOATBUILDERS

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visit www.classicboat.co.uk 92

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

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Marine Directory CHARTER

BOATBUILDERS

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Full member YDSA Contact Tony Tucker tel/fax +44 (0) 1442 253775 www.tucker-designs.com

The Marine Directory is the place to advertise your boat designs and engines call Patricia Hubbard now on +44 (0)207 349 3748 CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

93

MARINE DIRECTORY dINghIES

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Letters LETTER OF THE MONTH SUPPORTED BY OLD PULTENEY WHISKY

RON VALENT

any rights to it? Hope you can enlighten me in this respect.

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CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

Raters on the Lea I was interested to read of the Thames Raters last month. As a teenager on the River Lea in the 1940s and 50s, we had three Raters at the Broxbourne Sailing Club. I think they were B-Raters, about 24ft (7.3m), named Cigarette, Lulu and Why Not? I know Cigarette came from the Thames; she had a gunter rig with a curved gaff which gave a lot of sail high up. Lulu and Why Not? originally had aluminium masts allegedly from the break-up of the R100 airship. They were made in a spiral rather like a cardboard roll, both bermudan rig. Lulu did not do much sailing but we teenagers who were generally sailing 12ft Nationals

MARK LAITY

Hemingway’s marlin boat and Yacht design winners

JFK

Inside the Royal Yacht Squadron

January 1987 - December 2012

was derived from a photo, but one that had been sent to him by a client in the West Indies. There are issues of copyright but it’s a bit of a grey area in our digital age. How about a bottle of whisky? – Ed

www.classicboat.co.uk

The Wor l d’ s M o s T BeAUTIFU l BoATs

witithh w

Above right: The original photograph and, left, the painting

Quite uncanny, Ron! We contacted Dennis who confirmed the painting

i

I was reading a copy of your December issue when I noticed your page 53 reproduction of the CB Award Winning painting by Dennis Syrett, which featured at the Royal Society of Marine Artists’ annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries last autumn.

That looks familiar, I thought!

I opened my Facebook and looked at one of my folders, and yep... there it was [see photo right]. An identical shot to the painting – which is simply a perfect copy of an image I took when crewing on Elena.

I am not out to get money or anything, although my friends say I should, but I was curious to know how things like this work.

When you publish a photograph on Facebook do you relinquish

DENNIS SYRETT

Picture perfect painting

and 14ft Internationals sailed the other two quite often.

Their construction was in mahogany with ribs every 3-4in for the whole length, and a galvanised steel plate and rudder – the latter had to be installed in the spring by inserting a string in the rudder aperture before launch and pulling it through when afloat.

Today the Broxbourne Sailing Club no longer sails on the river but in a nearby former gravel pit.

John Radford, by email

BEKEN OF COWES

Send your letters (and any replies please) to: Classic Boat, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ email: cb@classicboat.co.uk

Blue Gauntlet challenge I was interested to see the fine painting of Red Gauntlet and Howard Benbrook’s request for information about her in February’s CB. I came across her in 2006 in the little West of Ireland port of Kinvara, looking somewhat out of place among the Galway Hookers. I recognised her immediately as a Berthon Boat Company Gauntlet.

Back in the 1950s, when I was 15, I made my first crossing of the English Channel in her sister ship, Blue Gauntlet, owned then by Group Captain Leo Maxton.

There’s now an excellent Berthon Gauntlets website, with full details of Red Gauntlet, under her new Irish ownership – and an explanation of how the class got its name (through a successful challenge from Berthon’s Harry May, as to whether his spurned design was a better bet than a preferred alternative).

But there are no details on the website of Blue Gauntlet. My own challenge, therefore: can any CB readers tell me something of her history, and present whereabouts?

Mick Delap, London SE10

Song of praise for Classic Boat I’d just like to say I’ve been enjoying your magazine for several years while fixing up a Folkboat, and have been helped and thoroughly enjoyed it even through what I’d call a bit of a hiccup a year or so ago when there might have been a little too much sheen introduced. Still, you’re back on

track. Keep up the good work – notably the excellent quality of photography, humour, (mags can be so stuffy), the broad subjects and particularly the writings of Meyric Hughes, Venables and yourself, although I see you have many more excellent writers.

The Rev J Hughes Captain RN

Identity of a mystery dinghy I believe that I can solve the mystery of the identity of Andy Reeve’s boat featured in your Letters page in the February edition. This is a Halcyon 14 and it matches an identical boat I have recently purchased for a light renovation project. The builder’s plaque, “Kenneth M Gibbs & Co of Shepperton” is a key clue since I believe this yard built several Halcyons as private commissions. In fact, the one I have purchased was built as a wedding gift from the groom to his bride in 1950. I shall be sailing mine in the Walton Backwaters in Essex. Congratulations to Andy on the wonderful restoration of his boat. It looks superb!

Andy Ladds, by email Andy Reeve seems to have acquired a boat I owned 20 years ago. She had been many years in a garage and I bought her cheaply to save her from the dump. She was called Jasmine and I tried to restore her; she had Egyptian cotton sails. I sailed a few times but was unable to stop the leaks and so sold her on.

I often wished I had kept her. Dave Parker, Redruth, Cornwall

Tomas Barrera & Hemingway I read the recent article in CB294 on Hemingway and Pilar (now so beautifully restored – congratulations) and wanted to both share additional information and ask a question.

Many years ago I found a copy of the 1916 book The Cruise of the Tomas Barrera, by John B Henderson. This lofty and lovely Cuban vivero schooner was offered to the Smithsonian Institution for a marine biology expedition by her owner, Sr. Raoul Mediavilla, in the spring of 1914. Sadly the vessel was wrecked in 1916. I have been seeking more information about the Tomas Barrera in the hopes of gathering enough to build a fine scale model of her.

Gregorio Fuentes – Hemingway’s Captain and Boatkeeper for Pilar, was adopted and raised by Sr Mediavilla. I tried several times unsuccessfully to reach Sr Fuentes and his family before his death, hoping that he might have other photographs of Tomas Barrera or other anecdotes to share about the schooner.

I also sought the archives of the photographer who provided the frontispiece for the book, Rafael B Santa Coloma, apparently quite a famous photographer in his day.

If anyone can pass this note to Sr Fuentes’ family or to any other who might assist I would be most grateful.

Meanwhile, I hope this link between Pilar and another vessel, which I am sure Hemingway would have loved had he seen her, is of interest.

Randle M Biddle, by email

READER’S BOAT OF THE MONTH

Jumbo and her builder

Your help needed!

This is Jumbo, built in 1923 by William Haywood of Leigh-on-Sea for the Mayor of Southend-on-Sea, a Mr F Ramez. He sold her to Mr J H Maltby in 1925 who kept her at Brightlingsea in Essex until his second paid skipper died in 1969.

As her current owner I know her history from 1925 until 1969 but it would be nice to find out more about the yard she was built in.

I have been told that she is built with the typical lines of the fishing boats of the area.

All I have so far been able to find out is that the yard went out of business in the 1930s.

Roger Baxter, by email

CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2013

97

Sternpost to visit someone who lives on a boat in Limehouse Basin and whose name had been mentioned to me by someone at a launch party for a book

by Julia Jones – who owns another of Ransome’s boats, Peter Duck.

The name was Ed Maggs, which I’d recognised as an antiquarian bookseller whose family firm has close associations with the CA. Ed and I hadn’t been chatting for more than five minutes before he mentioned that his father had owned Ransome’s Racundra... “But then didn’t everybody?” he added cheerily.

But what was even odder was when we went aboard Ed’s beautiful boat, a 55ft (16.8m) gaffer called Bettyalan, a one-off built in the 1950s. “Who designed her?” I naturally asked. Ed’s reply was unexpected. “It was Jerry Lines – he was chief designer at Campers, but something of an unsung hero.”

Which brings me in a circuitous way to the Boat Show – where one of the highlights was the appearance on the Old Gaffers stand of David Dimbleby (whose son Henry appeared, as Tom Dudgeon, in the TV adaptation of Ransome’s Coot Club and The Big Six). The show itself was much diminished this year, crammed into one hall, half of it full of power boats, the other half resembling a tightly-packed soukh, with the odd boat slipped in here and there (at vastly reduced stand rates, so I heard).

It looked like a show designed to demonstrate the redundancy of a boat show in London in January. Which raises the twin questions of what it is for, and what we would do without it.

Increasingly, I find it’s for meeting up with each other.

Old friends, new acquaintances. I didn’t buy anything at this year’s show, apart from the odd round of Guinnesses, but I did come away with a fistful of business cards and phone numbers, and the memory of some jolly conversations. So the question is how we could replicate this essential facility without a hall full of marine merchandise to provide an excuse and perhaps to pay for the venue.

One source of inspiration might be the Yachtsman of the Year awards bash organised by the Yachting Journalists Association, and a great occasion for meeting and chatting.

I found myself talking to a woman who for some reason (now lost in the mists of champagne) was explaining that her husband was obsessed with buying an old Hillyard. Nancy Blackett is a Hillyard, so I mentioned this, and the fact that she’s available for people to sail.

“He’d be thrilled,” she replied. “He’s a huge fan. In fact he called his daughter Nancy.”

Six degrees of Ransome Peter Willis finds the author is a recurrent connecting thread

I

n the CB office, I field a random phone-call. It’s from a reader, enquiring about the Classic Boat Index. He identifies himself as Jerry Lines, archivist at Camper & Nicholsons. It’s not a name that I recognise, though he’s actually in the Index. But more on him in a moment.

A name you may have heard of is Kevin Bacon. No? He’s a film actor who is so prolific that he’s become a byword for the interconnectivity of the film industry.

Anyone who works in it is supposed to be able to link themselves, via a chain of no more than six acquaintances, colleagues or jobs, to him, and thus to each other. It’s now a recognised sport, known as ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’.

I’ve become convinced lately that Arthur Ransome could be the Kevin Bacon of the classic boating world. I admit to being peculiarly sensitised to his name as a result of my association with one of his boats, the Nancy Blackett (alias the Goblin in We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea); even so, it’s odd how often his name crops up, and gets tangled with other threads. When covering Duet’s centenary for CB292, I visited her owner Chris Courtauld – whose house on the Orwell, at Levington, was Ransome’s own home when he owned the boat.

Ransome cropped up again while I was working on the Cruising Association story for this issue – inevitably since he was an Honorary Local Representative for the CA in Riga in the 1920s, but there turned out to be more to it than that. The day after the above phone-call I was over at the CA sorting out some photography, and took the chance

98

CLASSIC BOAT MACRH 2013

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